The Great Story
by chezchuckles
Summary: A continuation of 'The Last Battle'. Beckett and Castle, after surviving the season finale, must work to create the home they dream of. Two of three.
1. Only the Beginning

**The Last Battle: The Great Story**

* * *

 _"[W]e can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story... which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."_

 _-CS Lewis, The Last Battle_

* * *

 **I. Only the Beginning**

 **x**

Kate Beckett opens her fist and releases the flowers, watches them drop to her mother's grave. She can't bend down to place them, and neither can he, so this will have to do: a snowfall of lilies along the still-green grass. They're lily of the valley, the flowers like little bells, the lawn glistening with dew.

It's been warm for autumn in New York, as if the universe has been treating them tenderly, shedding mercy over their recovery. The leaves are murmuring gold and green together, while her mother's headstone rises in dark lines in the early morning light. A shadow that falls across Kate's running shoes.

She has not been doing any running. Walking is a production these days, and she probably should not have insisted on this, going so far out, when they are both so easily capsized by exhaustion and ache.

His hand comes to her elbow; she doesn't know if he's stabilizing her or his own wobbling balance.

He's not healing much faster than she is, and she expected to be so woefully far behind him on this. It weighs her down. She's not good at recovery; she's worse when he's as bad off as she is. When they're both struggling to merely _live._

Kate lets out a slow breath and eases her body in a half turn to look at him. He's wincing. It's a permanent thing with him now. The gaunt cast of his face and the bruises under his eyes belie the smile he offers. He's not getting enough sleep; the recovery process would go smoother for him if he could only sleep at night.

Pot, kettle, of course. She's not sleeping much either.

"Where to now?" he says, his eyes kind despite how tired he must feel.

"Hom-" Kate breaks off, tears rising too hot and too fast, burning her eyes and tightening her throat. _Home._ She doesn't know where that is any longer, but here, here, his fingers at her elbow and her body listing towards his. This is what she knows, this man, and what they're desperate to recapture.

Dreams die hard.

"Home," he echoes, a hollow ring to the long _o._

She meets his taut grimace and he looks so tired that the tears spill out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

Castle draws an arm slowly around her waist, low, and he takes one stumbling step into her, their bodies bumping ungracefully. "We'll get there, Kate. I promise."

"I know," she says roughly, smearing tears away with his shoulder. The material of his shirt soaks them up, and she's glad she couldn't bring herself to lift her arms to apply make-up this morning. No mascara stains this time. She cries a lot. "I know we'll get there, but what do we do in the meantime? We're not... healing, Rick."

He breathes hotly against her neck; she can feel him struggling. They ought to go back to the car where her father waits for them. But she doesn't want to go back there, haunt the loft like mute ghosts for another insomniac night.

"I have nightmares," Castle confesses, his lashes dragging at her temple where his head is bowed. "And I wake up but the dream doesn't end. I keep having to check-"

"I know," she promises back. "I know. Me too." She shivers with the sudden wind, and the shudder makes her hunch, rounding her shoulders forward with pain.

"Ouch," he says sympathetically, their old joke. Tired out joke. Not a joke at all. It hurts.

"Ouch," she admits, her forehead knocking into his and resting there. Her mother's grave at her back, the lilies spread like a piecework quilt not yet stitched together. She can smell their sharp scent in the cool air.

"I love you." His hand finds a path under her shirt, presses warm fingers at her spine as if he can brace her. "We'll figure it out. We're alive, we're together."

Kate takes in a deeper breath despite the way it awakens all of her old aches. The expansion of her lungs pushes on her diaphragm so that it feels tender, weak even. "I love you," she promises. She doesn't know about the rest, how they'll figure it out, but she's grateful for him. He never loses hope.

For a long moment, they stand together, leaning against each other for strength and balance. The sun has crept higher, beginning to burn off the early morning haze. His fingers stroke along her spine. "You know lily-of-the-valley are poisonous, right?"

She grunts, lifts her chin to look at him.

His lips curl, twist into a knowing smile. "Highly poisonous."

"Castle," she whines. "You could have _told_ me before I scattered them out here. Wild animals can get to them and I can't bend down to pick them up."

He laughs then, quiet as it is, dampened to keep the mirth from vibrating the bones of his shoulder. She knows because she's done the same, moderated her every expression to keep from falling apart.

"Watch," he says, and touches a kiss to the corner of her eye.

And then he sinks slowly to the green earth, gripping her calves for balance. She can't even reach to catch him, but he seems to be making it. For a second, he leans his forehead against her knees, resting there, and then he slowly gathers each and every stem of poisonous white flower, so innocent and bell-like, so apparently dangerous to wildlife.

When he leans back, he lifts his eyes to hers and she's struck all of the sudden by just how much adoration is caught up in her love for him. Longing swamps her, so thick, so deep, that her eyes blur.

"Get off your knees. You'll hurt yourself," she husks, tears spilling over. "Stupid pain pills are making me weepy."

"Mm, only the pain pills, huh," he says, carefully getting a foot under him, pushing off against his knee. She catches him, what she can, but it's not like she can do anything to pull him up; she has no strength for it.

When he rises once more, he presents her with his collected bundle, the white bells nodding in the breeze. Her hair catches in her eyelashes and she scrapes it away, watching him. She bites her bottom lip, taking the flowers against her aching torso.

"Why did you buy me poisonous flowers," she mutters. They've been surrounded with flowers since they woke in the hospital. His fans, for the most part, but some are _her_ fans too. Nikki Heat, Captain Beckett both.

His fingers at her elbow. "Who says I bought them?"

"I know you."

His crooked smile makes her heart flutter. "They're the only ones you saved in the hospital."

"Only because your mom brought them," she whispers, chewing hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying.

It's true the pain pills tug her emotions to the surface, but it does the same for him; they often wind up tearful and smiling or furious and silent, depending on when physical therapy has come around. But today is their anniversary, and they're alive, and she wants to push past this and move beyond.

Today is freedom, and he bought her lilies of the valley and presented them to her in the car, and she doesn't know _why_ she made him come to her mother's grave after all of this, why she needed to do this. Closure? Nothing feels resolved; there is no closure. And coming here hasn't given her any of the answers she's been seeking.

"My mother brought them in?" he muses. "I didn't realize. I woke from a nap after physical therapy - you know that man's hands were like meat grinders - I still feel pulverized - and it was the first smile I saw on your face. Those flowers between us on the side table. Made it all worth it."

"Stop being romantic," she sighs. She wishes the sun were out so she would have a good excuse to slide on sunglasses and hide her eyes. She dashes away tears with a thumb. "You've been shot."

"So have you. Twice." He cups a bell-flower in two fingers, smiles sadly. "Besides, it's not romantic if they're poisonous."

She laughs then, the soft exhalation of sound that passes for her laughter these days, and she tilts her head forward until her cheek brushes his jaw. "Thank you."

"Didn't realize you were going to scatter them to the four winds, or I might have stopped you," he hums. "But I think your mother will understand."

"She doesn't need them, because she isn't here," she promises him. A hand fisting in his shirt to keep her balance. "She's not in a place; she's wherever we are, those of us who remember her. Just like home. It's not a place." She lifts her chin and meets his eyes, and she can see him swallow hard. She smooths her hand against his shirt, takes a breath. "We're going to move out of the loft, Castle."

Astonishment crosses his face.

She slowly reaches down to catch his hand, tangling her fingers with his as the wind licks across them. Castle's hair is ruffled, and hanging in his eyes, but his surprise has begun to clear into determination. She's glad of that. She needs him on this. And if he can lower himself to his knees before her, she can do something equally as hard and make this decision.

"We're not sleeping," she starts, her voice raw. "We can't settle in. We're trying to-" She swallows and shakes her head, blowing out a breath, trying not to cry again. "Nothing's working. It's not working."

"Hey." His fingers hook with hers, squeeze. His face is set. "Your dad is waiting in the car for us. So let's go find out where home is now, shall we?"

She nods fast, shaky with how much she needed to say that, get it out there.

He takes the lead out of the cemetery, their fingers laced together, the flowers in the crook of her arm and smelling like honey and sunlight.

 **x**


	2. Slow Work

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _The wolf appointed to tear me apart_  
 _is sure making slow work of it._

 _Dean Young, '_ _Could Have Danced All Night'_

* * *

 **II. Slow Work**

 **x**

Castle lets out a bark of pure agony, slams his head back into the padded table. His physical therapist, Mike, ignores him.

 _Hurt isn't harm, hurt isn't harm_ , Castle chants to himself.

Mike said it once, at the beginning, or maybe Kate, after one of her own sessions - something her therapist told her. She has the same guy as before (which guts him out: she has wound care specialists on her contacts list; she has a team of professionals she knows at heart; she's done this all before. Getting _shot_ is _routine_ ).

But damn if the hurt doesn't feel an awful lot like intense harm. Harm he will never recover from.

His arm is shaking so badly it sends vibrations into his whole chest, and the pain there echoes back to the pain in his shoulder.

"Fuck," he snarls, tipping his head back. Sweat pours down his face, the divide of his spine. He's gasping instead of doing the breathing counts; he's a failure at therapy. "Just shoot me. Put me out of my misery. No, don't shoot me, that doesn't seem to work. I'd like the lethal injection this time. Never fails. Cool and blessed relief."

Mike is watching his arm waver like he's not even listening. He probably isn't. Castle's jokes are falling way flat. He can't think clearly enough to joke, but he keeps trying.

But he wouldn't mind an injection of something at least.

Castle grinds the back of his head into the padded bench where he lies flat, feet braced, knees shoulder-width apart, keeping form with supreme effort of will. His arm is stretched merely outright, held up under his own power.

His shoulder is _killing_ him.

Mike presses the heel of his hand to the front of Castle's shoulder, keeping the shoulder blade in place as Castle's arm bobs and weaves in the air. He's supposed to be holding it steady, but that's not happening.

"Five," Mike intones. "Four. Three."

"Two-One," Castle rushes and lets his whole body collapse.

Mike sighs, gives a slight shake of his head. Castle isn't supposed to collapse; he's supposed to use muscle to control the descent of his arm, but the _hell_ if he can actually accomplish that at the end of a two-hour PT session.

"Have you been doing your exercises?" Mike asks him. "At home. Like I told you."

"Home is in flux right now," he croaks. Drags his good hand up to his face and wipes sweat from his eyebrows where it always collects. Salt granules from the two hours of sustained torture are gritty under his fingers. "Home isn't home."

"I don't know what that means, but I do know that you're not here in my office twenty-four/seven, are you?"

"No," he gets out, tries to remember how he's supposed to be breathing. "I'm thankfully not here all day every day."

"When you're not _here_ ," Mike says, using a finger to gesture for Castle to roll over. Like a trained dog, Castle does, with a great deal of difficulty, only to have Mike's hands land on his lower back, kneading. "You need to be doing the exercises. Keep the record in that blue folder I gave you, mark off the day and time and reps."

"Yeah, ye-ow." Castle jerks as Mike's thumbs press and hold the knots that have formed in his lower back. This is honestly the sole reason he keeps coming. He would have given it up before now if Mike's post-torture therapy massage weren't such unmitigated bliss. "That's - the spot."

Mike says nothing, no amusement, but no serious retribution either. Castle wonders if he ought to switch to Kate's PT, since their relationship seems to be filled with a whole lot more conflict and tension. The constant beratement necessary to stiffen the spine, get moving.

Castle could really use a dominant personality beating against his own these days. Kate hasn't been...

She's faded.

Whatever conflict and tensions they used to have, whatever _spark_ , has been subsumed in pain and grief and desperate gratefulness. On both sides, he thinks, not just her. She's not the only one so sickly grateful to _have_ a life together still that all problems or issues are met with that submissive wash of _how can this be at all important_.

When Castle sits at his desk and she curls on the couch with the heating pad and they just stare at each other, so pathetically grateful they're here... none of the petty arguments, none of the larger and more pressing issues either, really matter.

Mike's hands reshape the curves of his spine and Castle groans, pressing his face into the towel where his head fits the padded hole. One of the physical therapy assistants has come over and is now gripping his ankles while Mike holds his back in place. She lifts his feet up, his knees bending, and she pushes his feet back to his ass.

He grunts as his spine pops and adjusts; relief floods him like hot tears, and it takes a moment for him to realize.

He's really crying.

 **x**

Alexis is his handler for this afternoon, it appears, because his daughter is waiting in the lobby on one of the plush couches with a _Sports Illustrated_ open on her lap. When she sees him, she jumps up, and the pages flutter like a spooked bird.

"Dad," she gasps.

"I'm alright," he gets out, ashamed of the blotchy ugly cry still showing on his face. He thought it would be his mother. "Is Gram with Kate?"

"Yeah, her dad is showing the loft to some friend of his."

"Oh," he says, his heart picking up. "That's good."

Alexis nods hesitantly, but Castle is too tired to tease it out of her right now. If she's not happy about them renting out the loft for the year, she can speak up. Until then, Castle can't.

He just can't.

"You ready?" she asks, flashing the new key at him. "We're picking up Kate and Gram on our way."

"Oh?" He catches sight of the fob and lifts an eyebrow. "We're leaving from therapy?"

"Kate's idea. She says at least you'll both sleep through it."

He feels about as tender and raw as a plucked chicken, only no one has shown up with that comforting killer cone to break his neck. Riding in a car for hours really doesn't feel like a good idea, but the passing out part will probably happen. "Everything is packed?"

Alexis is trying to herd him towards the door, and he lets himself be herded like a good barnyard animal. "Car is packed. We have snacks. I made a playlist. And Hayley has a set of keys. Everything has been taken care of, Dad."

"Are you driving us the whole way?" At her nod, he finally allows himself to be steered out the door. "Since everything has been taken care of. You mind if I lower the seat and crash?"

"So long as I don't," she says cheekily, grinning at him.

"Lame. So lame." But it lifts his heart, so heavy in his chest, and Castle uses his good arm to hook her around the shoulders. "Thanks, baby bird."

She wrinkles her nose at the sweat still damp at his t-shirt, but she pats him consolingly. "Alright, Dad. Come on. I called the housekeeper but Gram has been threatening to cook."

He groans as they shuffle down the sidewalk, and the sound comes from the ache in his bones, the grind in his shoulder, but he tries to cover as best he can, playing it off as mock distress instead of real. "Don't let Gram near the kitchen, pumpkin. You know better."

"She wants to be helpful, since she can't stay."

"Neither can you," he grumbles. "You have a whole semester left because of us, and-"

"No. Dad. Really. It's not your fault I bombed summer school. I just wasn't interested. And it took too long to decide my major and I had to have 6 more hours of upper level sociology, so-"

It is their fault, but that's so far down his list of burdens. "Well, my PI business is all yours. You do what you like with it. When we get back-" His voice falters.

Alexis gestures to the changed light, waits for him to cross the sidewalk ahead of her. But he can't come up with the end of that sentence, for what happens when he and Kate can finally face the city again.

"Will you be back?" Alexis says, her voice so quiet that she sounds like a little girl again.

"You know Kate," he answers. A slow breath that doesn't disrupt the ache that has spread across his chest. "She won't let it keep her down. She'll be back."

"And you with her."

"Of course."

Alexis sighs and drops her cheek to his good shoulder, snakes her arm through his. "Of course," she says, squeezing. "Of course. Thank God for Kate."

 **x**

He jerks as he comes awake, sloughing off heaviness, struggling.

"It's me." Her face above him, her hand on his chest as if to hold him down. Maybe she is. She smiles. "We're here."

He groans as he shifts, wishes he hadn't slept the whole way. His shoulder is throbbing. He should have stayed awake to keep the joint loose. "Did Alexis drive?"

"She did," Kate assures. "They went on inside, left me to wake you."

He blinks and turns his head. He's still in the front seat with the seat back lowered all the way down. The SUV they bought is parked on the gravel drive before the Hamptons house, and instead of feeling relief, like he expected, there's a tension across his shoulders that's not dissipating.

With the seat lowered, he's practically in Kate's lap in the back. She has a hand on his good shoulder, fingers rubbing lightly at his shirt over his heart. "You okay?"

"I thought it would be different," he admits, grimacing. "Thought it would - solve the paranoia."

She sighs, but he sees the way her eyes travel the lines of the house through the open windows. The cool air of November, the dark conifers, the shadows. "The pool is heated," she murmurs. "Remember when you took me here, the first time together? October. It was warm then too. Warm for fall."

"Mm." He can't bring himself to lift up; it's nice with Kate's fingers rubbing over his shirt. Though she keeps herself very carefully still. Even now. He sighs. "Maybe it's because murder found us here too."

Her eyes drift down to meet his, the gold flecks alive and drawing green. "It did... but wasn't it fun? It used to be fun."

He reaches up and closes his fingers around her elbow, his thumb making slow circles against her skin. To remind her. Reassure her. "It was the best," he promises. "It will be again."

"But right now?"

"Aren't you tired?" he gets out. The most desperately honest he's been in a while. "I can't move without thinking it through, every step of the way, is this going to work, can I reach, will it hurt."

"That fades," she murmurs. "Eventually."

"And until then."

She bites her bottom lip. "I don't - want to keep waiting for until then. I did that once before, Castle, and I nearly lost you. Putting it off until it was almost too late."

Astonishment drops him off the cliff. He rolls forward and toward her, all on his good side, but he uses his stiff shoulder to draw an arm around her waist. He buries his head in her lap, and she drops her hands to his upper back, rubbing slowly.

He doesn't want to hurt her. He doesn't want to lose her either. Or have her lose him.

"We won't stay here forever," she tells him roughly. Her fingers come to his nape and scratch lightly at his scalp. "We can't stay. This isn't our life, it's vacation."

In November, after they've had a summer of trying so hard to live with it.

"A vacation, Rick."

He nods into her lap. But he could use _retirement,_ not merely a vacation.

She pats his back. "Then get up, get moving, before Alexis worries. It'll take me long enough as it is."

He swallows and lifts his head. "Do you want the chair?"

She scowls, but he sees her consider it. "No."

Then it really will take a while.

 **x**


	3. Pretend It Matters

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _Does it matter?_ I smile—it is as if the universe balanced  
on those three words & we've landed in the unanswerable. I  
have to admit that no, it doesn't, not really, matter...  
 _But_ , I whisper, leaning in close, to get _through the next  
_ _forty-seven minutes we might have to pretend it does._

 _Nick Flynn, '_ Forty-Seven Minutes'

* * *

 **III. Pretend It Matters**

 **x**

Kate Beckett wakes slowly, slowly, from one of her first nights with full sleep.

She's alone in the ground floor bedroom, one of the guest rooms that she and Castle are sharing while she still can't tackle the stairs. They've asked her not to. She defers to their judgment because...

She doesn't know why. The fight has left her. Grey days ahead, and she had known they'd be coming, the bleak stretch of recovery.

Why she never could find the heart to call Castle that first time around.

The bed is wide and cool, and she stays very still to keep from waking other things. Muscles that won't work right, bones that shiver, tendons stretching, scars that feel rubbed with a cheese grater. She is a mass of keloids and hypertrophic scars, places where it hurts and where it is merely shiny and new and might one day fade.

 _Oh, the plastic surgeon-_ he told her. Kate appreciates the resources, the easy connections, the problem solving taken out of her hands. Oh, the plastic surgeon? Sure, let him measure and weigh her, let him figure it out instead.

She's only just woken, but she's already depressed. Though she's rateful she wants to get out of bed even if she has to steel herself to the process. And she has Castle this time around. Little less bleak that way, isn't it?

She wants to get out of bed even if the day is grey.

Now to actually get out of bed.

Kate slides her hand along the cool mattress, all on her left side, the strong side, and pushes herself upright. A tremble runs through her bones, but she pulls her left knee up as well, gets it under her hips, shifts.

"God," she gasps, rocking forward, trying not to collapse.

The early morning ache is all stone grinding on stone, but she pushes herself carefully upright, dragging her right leg up despite the fragile feeling that grows in her chest.

No one will come to rescue her. She has to do this alone. She wants to have babies, she wants to _hold_ them; she wants to _want_ her husband badly enough to make it possible in the first place.

Well, she does want him. Mostly she wants to lie wedged against him and have his body heat keep her muscles loose, his arms banding around her shoulders to keep her from unraveling.

Like last night. Like falling asleep to the way he hushed her, _it's okay, it's okay, even if I do dream, I won't let go-_

At night, why is it so much more desperate? Why does she assume she's going to die? That everything is already ruined.

In the morning, with the sunlight, even alone she thinks it's possible. Everything is possible. The PT exercises in the heated pool will finally begin easing the taut lines that enclose her chest in a vise, and she won't need the wheelchair to make it through the long walk down and back. Castle will grill the shrimp they bought yesterday, and she'll convince him to add the shucked corn and green peppers, the red potatoes, and make skewers, make a thing of it.

They'll have a glass of wine, being careful, moving judiciously, conserving energy, and they'll kiss. His lips will taste like smoke from the grill and that salt of the air, his skin will be slightly cool from the November wind, and those creases in his eyes will come back, grace her with his joy once more.

With that vision in her head, Kate drags her legs over the side of the bed and lets her feet dangle above the floor. She gropes with a toe and finds the wooden stairstep, slowly sinks to put her weight on it. She stands on the wide step, the effort taking its own toll, and she sways for a moment, breathing shallowly.

Slow breaths. Don't irritate her diaphragm, her capricious lungs. The sunlight is cool against her back, but faint and grey when she turns her head. The curtains have been pulled back, the wooden slats of the blinds are twisted open, though the light is weak and diffuse through clouds.

She wonders if he used his right hand or his left to open them this morning. If he's done the stretches and exercises the PT gave him. If he's babying his shoulder like he's not supposed to do.

If he worries over her the same way she worries over him.

Kate steps down and hisses, gritting her teeth on impact with the floor. Her whole body shifts out of place, and she has to grip the side table to keep from bowing forward - or dropping to her knees.

She presses a clammy hand to her bare thigh, helps shift her leg forward where her abdominal muscles won't catch. She manages to straighten up after another moment of listening to her own breathing, and then she's finally upright.

Heated pool. His smile when he sees her up. The way his arm slides low around her hips and holds her in place so he can kiss her. She can do this.

Kate shuffles forward, measuring her steps, her pace, her breathing. She finds the dresser and braces one palm against the flat front, grasps the center knob with a steadying breath.

One-two- _pull._

Lightning streaks through her torso and down deep into her pelvis, the pain so alike that night she wound up at his door that it's remarkable. Breath-stealing. Amidst all the pain, it somehow brings the near-ecstatic feeling close to the surface of her skin, makes her blood pulse at her inside thighs, her heart rate thunder. Like arousal. Like agony.

How fine the line she balances. (Except right now she's looking to put on clothes rather than take them off.)

She hopes he made breakfast. She needs to sit down and she just started.

 **x**

Castle has followed her out to the pool.

He has his own exercises to do, but she doubts he'll do them. He lies on a lounger and dozes, apparently warm enough in the grey day. She orients to him every time she makes another turn, seeks him out every time she comes up for air.

She knows he's watching her too.

He has to. She might drown. It's that bad.

But he's managed to make it alluring and electric for all that. Every time their eyes meet, her cheeks flush. It's not just the heated pool.

The winter morning has come to them hazy and grey, a hint of dampness that made the walk down here rather miserable. Castle has managed blue jeans and a thick plaid shirt that beams at her like a flag from the chaise. His hands are folded on his chest, his eyes half-mast and following her wake.

She makes another turn and puts her back to him, slow walks through the pool, being less careful about her steps than she would on dry land. The effort is still there, but the water holds her up on all sides, like swaddling a newborn, keeping her easily.

She cups her hands and presses them apart through the water, back together again, working the very tender muscles across her chest. The ones that hurt when she breathes. She's in the middle of the pool, that transition from shallow to deep, and the water comes up to her neck, makes her hair float around her in a dark collar, soft and silky against her cheek.

She's only made it midway across the pool when it begins to rain.

Kate pauses, glancing up to the grey and obscured sky, feels spatters against her cheeks, her forehead. Her bottom lip. Cool. She licks a drop and glances back to Castle, sees him with a hand out, testing the air.

Nothing can be done in a hurry. They will get soaked if the weather is so inclined. The pool is warm, she's flushed from exertion (he must have turned up the temperature), and she doesn't want to get out.

"Any lightning?" she calls.

"Not so far." His voice has a strange note to it, and she sees him sit up slowly. Wincing. A hand pressed to his shoulder. He looks uneven somehow, as if one side is fine and the other-

"You cold?" She swirls the water with a hand, feels the heat eddy across her skin.

"Yeah, it's - cold," he says, biting on a lip and hunching. Not just cold then, also pain.

She feels a drop spatter her eyelash, rubs it out. "Come join me."

His eyes dart to hers, and then up to the sky, and back to her in the pool again. "Join you."

"I'm not going anywhere. Little rain won't make me run. And well. I can't run," she finishes with a sigh. He looks absolutely unconvinced. She's tired of being tired, tired of not having. "Join me, Castle. Warm you up."

His cheeks are pink now, though the rest of his face is that blanched parchment color that she's come to hate. Pain and restlessness, pain and giving up.

Rain patters the water, dots the stones in darker splashes, washes over the trellis and the fence and between the eaves that overhang the pool.

"Rick," she calls over the sound of raindrops, the skitter of wind on paving stone. The distance between them feels wide. "Please?"

Their eyes catch. She's not sure she knows what she's asking, but he seems to understand anyway.

He leans forward, stands. His hands dangle at his sides as he looks at her, studies her in the pool. All she has are bikinis (so what? his eyes alone), and though the scars are visible and angry, she doesn't feel them when he looks at her like that. She doesn't feel branded by anything other than love.

His hands move for the button of his jeans, tug down the zipper. He has no belt, and his pants drop a little too quickly for her liking (the gaunt line of his jaw, the protrusion of his wrist bones, the knots of his knees are too prominent, omens). He's working on the buttons of the plaid shirt, and her lips draw up at the corner when she sees his boxers match - plaid on plaid.

"Cute," she calls out.

The shirt slides from his arms, his clothes in a heap before the chaise, and his thumbs tuck into the waistband of those plaid boxers. Tugging.

She grins widely. His eyes crinkle in the corners. He strips naked, entirely, beautifully, wonderfully naked, and Castle jumps into the pool with her.

She can't even feel the rain.

 **x**

After a long time, he retreats for the steps, his finger hooked in her bikini bottoms to bring her with him.

At the shallow end, she slides into his lap on the second step, her knees knocking the steps, a scrape on her shin that burns with chlorine. Castle drapes his arms loose and low at her back, and she leans carefully into him. The rain is a mist that haloes them, makes her lashes dewed, gives their necks a chill in the heated pool.

When her head lowers to his good shoulder, he lifts his hand and sinks his fingers into her wet hair. Comfort, claiming.

Neither of them want to exit the pool and walk shivering through the cold to the poolhouse for towels and a change of clothes, even though it's a matter of a hundred paces. No lightning, no thunder, just the perpetual damp and chill, the grey.

His fingers massage her neck, scratch her scalp. He's so wonderfully naked, and the water is warm, like licking tongues, and being this close to him, easily, feels like a miracle.

"Why haven't we done this yet?" she sighs.

Castle begins untying her swimsuit.

Her lips curl at his jaw, amused, and she touches her tongue to a raindrop, tastes salt and chlorine both. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Having a serious conversation with you about _until then_."

"Serious, is it?"

"Yes." Though his tone brooks no argument. "This has to come off."

"Oh, it does?" She doesn't move, lazy in the lull of water.

His fingers unthread the tie of her bikini top and he snakes the black strap out from between them, begins working on the knot of it at her spine.

"Your serious conversation starts with getting me naked?" she smiles.

"I don't know why you aren't already."

She giggles, unable to help it. Laughing hurts, but giggling does not, and she's so tired from the pool workout and turtle-racing Castle for the last hour that it feels too good to care.

"I should have asked earlier," he says, his words for her alone even though they're the only ones for miles. "I should have found out from the doctors or someone."

"What?" she startles, rearing back to look at him only to have her top fall off and drift in the water.

He grins, cups her breast in a hand, a thumb smoothing her skin so that she shivers. Half of that sensation hurts while the other half is... interesting.

He leans forward very slightly, the push of water helping him, and he kisses the top of her breast where the scar is most livid. "Everything is where it's supposed to be?" he murmurs, lips against her skin and making her flush deeply. The heat of the pool, his lips, his words. "Nothing... damaged? Because we have money for that. We can-"

"What are you asking?" she breathes. "Straight up, Castle. I can't parse subtlety right now."

"You were shot twice. One of those low enough that I wonder. Can we still have kids?"

The _we_ of it all makes her eyes burn, but she grips the back of his head and presses her mouth to his ear. "Yes, yes, it's not that. Diaphragm, not stomach-"

"Oh, _oh_."

She laughs, and it hurts, it really does, but his clearing confusion is something along the lines of adorable. "You thought-" She laughs again, though she can't quite catch her breath. "No, though they did take out the IUD in the hospital, one of the surgeries, I think. But not a contraceptive diaphragm - breathing."

"Oh, they took out the IUD." His face has this entirely interesting wash of comical enlightenment. "Oh, I thought - when you kept saying you were breathing shallow and your lungs - I should have figured it out. How did I think, this whole time, that-"

"We've both been knocked around," she offers, petting his cheek, her body erupting at the scrape of bristle against the palm of her hand. She shivers. "What you do to me."

"What I do-" Eyebrows dance. "Oh, right _now_? Oh, that's very good." His eyes are hooded when he takes her in, and his arms pull her a little closer, a hand at her hip and plucking at her bikini bottoms. "Easier in the pool, don't you think?"

"What, sex?"

"Yeah." A little abashed, but joyful, exuberant in that subdued way he has lately. She's made him happy. His mouth turns. "But, really, Kate, _serious_ conversation. Can we-?"

"I've been cleared medically, have you?"

"Funny," he says, a roll of his eyes though his hand goes no farther. "Is this going to do it? I mean, this is what you want, and what I want, and could we really be... doing it?"

"Not if you don't get in my pants," she mutters, rolling her eyes.

He huffs, but takes the hint, snags the black stretchy material and works it down her hips. She shifts, rocking side to side and sliding a leg up to help him, and then both pieces of her swim suit are floating in the pool.

And they're naked.

His hands caress her thighs and come to frame her hips. "Have mercy on me." His eyes are the blue of sadness, something held back from her. "I can't parse today either, Kate. Would this be the beginning?"

She issues a slow breath, nodding. "In theory, everything is fine," she says softly. "But I'm almost 38, and we've had - major trauma - and life doesn't seem to be willing to give me extra grace-"

"Stop," he hushes, the voice the one he uses in bed to stave off her panic. "Stop, Kate. We're here. Alive-"

"Together," she whispers. Her body feels naked with him more than it ever has, more even than their first night. Naked and exposed and all her messy insides spilling into his hands.

He doesn't let her go. "Right here, then," he husks. She can feel him, the struggle to be closer, to be with her. "Right here, Kate. There is no _until then_. You promised. You doing this with me?"

She winds her arm tighter, as much strength in it as she can, gripping his neck, holding on. "I want anything with you," she confesses. "I want what comes next to be-"

"Ours," he interrupts. His nose brushes hers, breath fanning her cheek. "Whatever it is, it's ours. Whether it works or not. Doesn't matter. It's ours."

"It does matter," she whispers, tilting her head into his. A heaviness begins sinking her down, no longer floating. "It matters if I can't have-"

"No," he says, words forming on his lips and pressed to her mouth. "No, it doesn't. Not really. What matters is us."

His hand at her inside thigh suddenly finds her. She cries out, stunned by the way it rushes, thrumming, by the way the water and the mist and her heart conspire with his fingers.

He adjusts her in his lap even as her knees begin to shake. The water pools at his collarbones and she puts her mouth there. He groans her name, something hurried about him now. His body rubs against hers. His fingers open her.

She comes home.

 **x**


	4. How to Love

**The Last Battle**

* * *

 _After stepping into the world again,  
_ _there is that question of how to love,  
_ _how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning—  
_ _the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape  
_ _of cold wipers along the windshield—  
_ _and convert time into distance._

 _-January Gill O'Niel, 'How to Love'_

* * *

 **IV. How to Love**

 **x**

While she's in the shower, he makes their coffees in two thermoses he scrounged in the cabinets. He puts half and half in hers because she could use some rich calories, and then he adds it to his own because the same could be said for him.

He stirs agave syrup into the concoction and screws on the lids, carries the two coffees to the end table nearest the back porch. On top is the plastic bag they use to collect shells, and propped against that is the walking stick to dig in the sand (he's noticed it helps his shoulder's range of movement, having to wedge the end into the shore and push off). A jumbled assortment of things have collected here at the back doors where they go in and out, as if life can't be managed much past the threshold.

He leaves the coffees on the table but shoves lip balm and his keys into the pockets of his cargo pants, and then he waits.

Not long. They have this timed perfectly, this slow routine of their days.

He can hear the door to the bedroom suite open and then her bare feet on the wood floor as she comes through the living room. Kate emerges with her cheeks pink from the shower, from exertion, the effort of dressing herself. She's wearing black sweat pants and another of his plaid shirts, this one with the brown check pattern, and she's rolled the sleeves to her forearms. She has a black tie around her wrist.

"Your hair?" he offers.

She hands over the tie and gestures to the couch, so he gets in place while she turns her back to him. She sinks down to the arm of the couch slowly, with effort, and then perches there with her hands on her knees. Breathing hard.

He reaches down and scrapes her wet hair back into a knot at her nape, the way she likes it, a few hairs coming loose despite his best effort. She grits her teeth and resumes standing, though it takes effort, and despite his instincts he doesn't offer to help. He just watches as she sways on her feet, hands in fists.

"Hey, made something for you," he says, nudging her along.

Kate steps to the side table near the lone reading chair, lips widening, and she reaches for the thermos on the entry table. Already lifting it to her lips.

"Wait," he warns. "I used the agave."

She pauses and regards the thermos distrustfully.

"You'll like it," he promises. "Never steered you wrong with coffee."

She takes a hesitant sip, and her eyes close. He watches avidly, waiting on her verdict, hoping he did the right thing, surprising her this morning. Out of their routine.

She gives a content noise. "Never steered me wrong." Her eyes flutter open, glowing golden brown. Rich as coffee herself. "You did very good."

Is it ridiculous to smile so widely and want so much when she regards him like that?

Instead of crushing her in an embrace he couldn't sustain anyway, Castle reaches past her for the French door, turning the handle and opening the world to her.

Kate's fingers skim the back of his arm, tugging on the little hairs there. "Don't forget yours. Shame to let it go to waste, coffee this good."

"Don't worry. I won't," he murmurs, stepping back to allow her past him. He plucks his own coffee from the well-worn wooden table, takes a sip himself. It is really good, actually. More her flavor than his, but he likes it.

He follows her outside onto the back porch but instead of setting off down the path towards the dunes, she waits for him by one of the wide reclining deck chairs.

"Sit with me?" She sounds strange.

"I thought you said getting up was the worst part of your day," he reminds her. Once she's upright - no going back for her. Usually. She's go, go, go.

Kate nods. "It is. But I want to watch the sunrise with you." _Close_ she seems to be saying, _let's be close_.

Castle wanders to the chaise lounge and gives it a once-over, studying the best way for her to approach it. But she makes a derisive sound in her throat and gestures to him. "Just sit. I'll find my own way."

He sits. Wedges his hips into the far corner to give her space, plenty of space if she needs it, but she's already making that ginger descent towards the chair. He removes the coffee from her hand so she can catch herself if she stumbles, and Kate manages to sit.

Mostly. She's rigid beside him, sitting a little too far forward (if he wasn't in the chair, it would tip forward and pour her out), but she begins easing back. Incrementally.

He opens his arm to her, his good side, and she finally leans all the way against him, her cheek to his shoulder, her pulse thumping so painfully hard that he feels it in his neck, his skin, his ribs. He kisses her forehead and hands back her coffee.

Her fingers are weak and he has to hold the thermos for her until she can grasp it. She might be shaking. Too much effort just for this, he thinks, but she's determined to watch the sun pink the sky. Determined to have a regular routine, to get up in the morning and do her exercises and be something like normal. He'd rather sleep until he doesn't feel like this any longer.

But that was last week, and he promised himself he would do things her way this week.

Her breath releases. Her shoulder rounds forward.

"Shoulders back," he murmurs.

"Shut up," she sighs, but he sees her trying to straighten her shoulders, keep them in alignment. Seeing her shift reminds him of his own alignment and he tries to do the same, bring his injured shoulder back and down, and he can feel the tightness in his pecs, the tension in those muscles beside his spine.

"You too?" she says, and he thinks she's smiling. But she hides it in her coffee mug, sipping slowly as the sun breaks the horizon. "Pretty out here. Cold though."

"It is," he agrees, still focused on his shoulder. The scars are tight too, where they had to go in later and remove bone chips. Already it feels like it's going to be a bad day. Painful. The cold doesn't help. The frost on the grass, the chill in the air.

Kate lays a hand on his thigh, traces her fingers at the edge of his cargo pockets.

He's paying attention now. He glances down at her and notices the depths in her eyes. At times it seems like they've been through too much for them to keep pushing forward, for it to not affect them. For them to not have moments where it is all so overwhelming.

But pretty words have deserted him. He just has to ask. "Are you sad?"

She stirs. But her head doesn't lift from his good shoulder. "I don't know."

"One of those days," he gives, watching her swallow coffee.

She curls her fingers at his knee, shifts with a grunt. "Yeah. And it's barely started."

He ignores the sun beginning to spread across the sky and instead he studies the light on her face, how it doesn't quite reach her eyes. She keeps mentioning having a family, getting back to their lives, figuring out work and the captaincy and what comes next, but neither of them have answers.

He has no idea what life they have to go back to.

"Will you go out with me?" he asks suddenly.

She lifts her head, stares at him.

He catches her hand on his knee. "I want us to dress up and eat a good meal, rich food. The kind where the wine is expensive and it makes you a little mad at me for spending too much. There are loads of restaurants in the Hamptons that cater to our income level. And dessert. Oh, dessert, Kate. Think of chocolate truffle and raspberry drizzle-"

"Okay," she says, her voice rough. But light in her eyes again. "A date. Tonight?"

"Tonight." He grins, bumps his knuckles into the bottom of her thermos. "Little more. You'll need that caffeine for tonight."

 **x**

He catches her tracing designs across her skin in the bathroom, watching her reflection in the mirror, two fingertips and the tilt of her head as she peers at her own body. The steam from the shower has the effect of relaxing his tightly-wound muscles, snaking out of the bathroom and wrapping around him.

She looks disconcerted, sad even, and that wasn't his intention with date night.

"You're fine," he says, stepping inside. His feet hit the tile and he winces, surprised at how cold it is. "Why didn't you turn the heater on?"

"Didn't think of it," she says abstractedly. "Is it fine? I wanted to do this but... this isn't fine."

"It happened," he sighs, standing at her side and glancing over at her. "Can't be helped."

"At least it's winter. Layers, your plaid shirts," she says, biting her bottom lip. He realizes after a late beat that she means _wearing_ his plaid shirts, that she's admitting to stealing them from his suitcase. Her eyes roam to him. "How about you?"

"My scars are cool," he says, lying a little for her sake, half shrugging. He has frozen shoulder, of course, and they're working on it, but-

"No, I meant..." She winces in response to his raised eyebrow and flutters a hand back to the still only half unpacked suitcases. "All that and just... um. We haven't had sex since that day in the pool, and it's been weeks."

He laughs. Her face goes scarlet and she glares at him, but he didn't mean it like that. "Not laughing at you, Kate. Just us. Believe me, the sex is great, still great. Was great." He presses his thumb and finger into his eyes and squeezes the bridge of his nose. "Are you really in the mood?"

He yelps when her hand comes to him; he jerks his head up, staring at her. She sighs. "You're _not_ in the mood."

"Give me a second," he croaks. "I spent four hours in physical therapy today. I'm definitely in the mood, Kate Beckett, but I got _nothing_."

She drops her hand and turns back to the sink, leans in and grips the edge. "I'm failing at this."

"At - what?"

"Life," she says, giving him a weak smile. "I had therapy today too, you know."

"Oh." Burke. "Over the phone?"

"Yeah," she says, chews on her lip again and then shakes her head - carefully - pushes off against the sink. "What do you think about concealer? I have a few shades." She takes a tube from the counter and holds it up for his inspection.

"Your skin is... a little pale for that," he says. He lifts a hand and touches her shoulder, skims his fingers over the soft skin. "Ivory. Beautiful. The scars too, you know. Maybe you don't know. But having cool scars isn't just for guys." At her wrinkled nose, he takes the bottle from her fingers. "It's not like your scars will make me lose my appetite. Dinner _or_ dessert."

An arch of her eyebrow, though he can tell it's half-hearted. "I suppose you think _I'm_ offering myself for dessert?"

He doesn't answer; she's not looking for one. He simply trails a finger at the lovely slope of her hip, lifts his eyes to hers. "I'll ask Mother to bring you some stage make-up. What did you use last time?"

"Regular concealer, but that scar is mostly in shadow, and I didn't have to do much." She angles her body slightly away from him and he realizes she's unhappy with how the v-neck blouse will reveal the angry pink of her scars - the puckered and misshapen kisses at her collarbone. He should have brought her into town and made her buy a dress. Or a turtleneck if that's what she wants. If it would make her feel better.

Castle turns back to the counter and scans the accoutrements she has piled around the sink, searching for a possible solution for tonight. But his eyes catch on a cardboard box half-hidden under a crumpled hand towel.

"Oh my God," he croaks, reaching past her, practically knocking into her. "You took a pregnancy test-"

"It's negative. It's not-"

"Yes, but _why_." He holds up the box, rattles the stick inside. "It's way too early - besides being entirely unlikely - we were in a heated _pool_ , for God's sake-"

"Are you _angry_ with me?" Her brow is stamped with furious lines, and she pokes his good shoulder. "Are you seriously yelling at me after all this?"

"I'm not yelling," he says, hearing his voice raise. "I'm trying to-" He grips the box and crushes it, chucks it towards the trash basket. "You did it without me."

Her mouth drops open.

He sighs and sinks to the counter, hurting in the usual places. All the usual.

Kate shifts on her feet. Even with his head hanging, he can see her fingers twisting before she reaches for him, catching the front pocket of his dress pants and tugging gently. He lifts his head and she splays a hand under his Oxford shirt, her palm cool where she touches him.

"I didn't do it without you," she says carefully. "I... bought it for later, for - something to look forward to. And then I took the test just because I'm cynical and self-sabotaging and it was mocking me. It's still mocking me. I'm _failing._ "

He huffs, takes her by the hips, guides her between his wide-set feet. She leans against him, and he can take her weight this time, and that feels good.

But obviously she hasn't been. Feeling good, that is. Especially not after going through the Burke ringer. "I see."

"You better not be angry," she mutters, but she's tilting her forehead into his.

"You better not take another test without me. We're failing _together._ Remember."

She lets out a long breath. "Deal."

He grins a little, nudging his nose into hers. "Deal."

"Did I ruin our date?"

"Only a little," he whispers, and she protests with a whack of her hand to his thigh.

He feels better already.

 **x**


	5. The Kindness

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _I couldn't breathe for the kindness.  
I couldn't say how deep that went  
for me.  
I had been backing up, awkward/  
I had been blind to my own beauty._

 _-Jan Beatty, The Kindness_

* * *

 **V. The Kindness**

 **x**

"Regular thing, isn't it?" the hostess asks with a smile. "And of course, we have your usual table."

Kate smiles back because it really is a regular thing, and she's proud of how far they've come. "Sort of happened that way." She feels Rick's hand come to her shoulder, the gentle nudge to move her forward. She follows the hostess through the dim interior of their favorite Hamptons restaurant, her coat heavy but her spine still straight.

The hostess leaves them with the menu and napkins for their drinks, but Rick waits and pulls out her chair as he has every Friday they've come. His presence at her side is reassuring.

She sits carefully, letting out a breath as her tension begins to release.

"Sit up straight," he murmurs, a knowing touch to her shoulder. She adjusts, putting her shoulders back, but it hurts. It really hurts. Yesterday's physical therapy pushed more than she thought she was capable, and now she feels it.

He sits opposite her and lays his hand on the table, seeking hers. She reaches out and touches his fingertips, stroking lightly.

"Don't worry," he says. "You don't have to seduce me. Already seduced. It's Friday."

She smiles, sits back in her chair to keep her spine straight, their fingers releasing.

"Christmas," he says, nudging again in a different way. "Alexis is going to come up a few weeks early. She wants to help decorate."

Kate groans. "We should have let her at Thanksgiving."

"Your dad called me about coming up."

She's surprised. Her father has been content to let her work it out on her own, her pace, and he knows she has Castle. "Have I been... unreachable?"

"A little bit," Castle hesitates. "You've slept a lot these last few weeks."

She chews on her bottom lip but they're interrupted by the waiter. He's brought their usual drinks without their asking, sets waters and then two glasses of house red. Kate takes hers immediately, a sip that bursts with flavor, and then another, longer swallow that diffuses warmth through her body. Finally.

God. She hurts just breathing. It's like the last six months have been erased and she's back at the hospital, barely able to sit up. Her hands are in fists in her lap while Castle orders their usual with minimal words, the same every Tuesday and Friday for the last six weeks.

When the waiter leaves, Kate studies her husband. "Have I been unreachable to you?"

"No, Kate. I'd have said something. I promised you I would."

She lets out a careful breath, nods.

"Alexis and I can do the decorating. If you're okay with that."

"Yeah," she says softly. She doesn't want to be unreachable - shut down so much that their family feels cold-shouldered by her inability to deal. "You don't mind if I sit on the couch and watch?"

"Only if you're coming off PT," he bargains. "Otherwise, you'll be helping."

She swallows and nods. She has to give herself a second to absorb that, the sting that comes with the knowledge that he's found her lacking. She asked him to kick her ass whenever he felt like she was being distant, to _make_ her open up again.

She _told_ him to judge her. She _needs_ him to judge her.

She can't do what she did last time: build a wall around herself so high she couldn't see out.

"I won't make you reach over your head, hang the garland. But I do expect you to kiss me under the mistletoe."

She smiles, relief sliding through her. "Yeah," she says, her words tangling in her throat. "I can do that."

He grins back, takes his own wine glass in his fingers. Their eyes connect over the rim as he sips and she feels that Friday flush begin in her guts, warming her.

They're not pregnant yet, but it's not for lack of love.

"Christmas is soon, Kate. You should write your letter to Santa."

 **x**

Alexis has arrived, bringing the winter inside with her. She looks different, as if she's matured while simultaneously growing younger, as if the last few years have fallen away and left instead the raw pink meat of her natural self, exposed to the world.

Her bags are still by the door and her coat in Castle's hands when Alexis blurts out, "I have a friend."

Kate is by the kitchen table, placing mashed potatoes beside the green beans. Castle made everything just for his daughter's first night home; it's still warm, steaming. He's been filled with so much bubbling excitement that she's caught it a little bit too.

"If you don't mind," Alexis hesitates, her voice a little high. "She's coming up after exams."

Kate glances over her shoulder and she suddenly knows. "A girlfriend," Kate breathes, something releasing inside her chest. Relief. Alexis is somehow more real. "Did you invite her to stay for Christmas?"

Castle is glancing back and forth between them as if she has some secret code he isn't privy to, doesn't understand. Alexis turns brimming eyes to Kate and smiles. "I didn't yet. Should I?"

"Of course. So long as she doesn't mind how sad and sorry we are," Kate offers wryly. "We go to bed around eight these days. And then wake up a hundred times a night to prowl the house. She won't mind?"

"She won't mind," Alexis says, giving a short noise, almost like a laugh. She turns back to her father. "I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know there was anything to tell before her, really, and I still don't, only I love her and she's-"

"Oh," Castle says blankly. And then his face clears and he grins. "Oh, is _that_ what we're talking about?" He draws his arm around his daughter and pulls her into a hug. He doesn't manhandle like he might have once; he doesn't have the ability to move quickly. "You have a special someone. That makes me happy. Though I will still give this girl-"

"Woman, Castle," Kate interrupts.

"Woman," he says witheringly. "Fine. I will give this woman the second degree just as I would _any_ boyfriend. Equal rights."

"Dad."

"She has to treat you well, pumpkin. She can't be taking advantage of you when you're in an emotionally-"

"Castle," Kate mutters, rolling her eyes. "Alexis is less emotionally compromised than we are and we're trying to get pregnant."

Alexis gasps, two hands to her mouth, swivels to look at her dad, and then back to Kate. "You _are_?"

"Trying," Kate cautions. She can see Alexis check herself, giving her father a more subdued hug, and then the young woman comes for her next. She receives the kind of embrace she's always received from Alexis, but this time she feels care and regard in it rather than distance.

"Trying is good," Alexis laughs softly. "Trying is really awesome."

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Everyone is moving on, the world keeps spinning.

Kate really hopes she can keep up.

 **x**

Kate likes this woman's hands. Strong, dark. The nails are pink and the palms are wide, with long fingers that taper. She's never seen hands like that on a woman before, or never noticed, but all her lines are just so clean and strong.

Callie. She strikes confidence in the erect posture of her thrown back soldiers, the exotic high cheeks.

Her mother is a lawyer for the NAACP who lives in Spanish Harlem. Her father teaches Russian poetry; he's white, and so Callie has grown up something of a chameleon, at home in a variety of cultures. She speaks Spanish, Russian, English. She's grateful for Alexis because it means she doesn't have to pick between her parents for Christmas, because it means not choosing sides.

Kate is impressed with her. And she can see how in awe Alexis is, how the same look on her face is the look on Castle's too. She likes that they're both halfway in love with Callie.

Kate shifts her shoulders on the couch, but she can't find a better position. She wonders if she's pulled something, if there are more wounds to heal from than she knew.

She sighs. The tree is lovely and massive, and Callie looks short beside it, but she's easily Kate's height. She's turning over the hand-made and glass-blown decorations one after another, inspecting memories. Kate sips hot chocolate spiced with rum, tries to keep from curling up and shutting everything out.

While Castle and Alexis are putting together the casserole for breakfast in the morning, Kate is playing hostess with the young woman. "You graduate this spring?"

Callie turns, smiles. Her eyes are kind. She knows the story then, must know what happened to them. "This spring, yeah. Cannot wait. I am ready to get out of academia. My dad, you know?"

She has a tendency to speak in half-sentences, sentence fragments. Kate knows it drives Castle a little crazy, makes him itch to correct her grammar. "Mm, I can see how it would seem like your whole life has been the university."

"It has. I'm ready for something different. Alexis and I have plans."

Alexis and I. Already? Interesting. "You'll let me know if you guys need help?" she asks carefully. She's tightening up tonight even with the rum. Breathing is laborious.

"My mom said the same thing," Callie answers, wrinkling her nose and coming back to the couch, plopping down. She doesn't seem to notice how Kate stiffens to absorb the blow. "But I don't think we'll need it. I'm a nursing major."

"Ah, ready made job. Very smart."

"I'm trying to convince Alexis to go to med school."

"Oh?" Kate is surprised. It's not what she thought Alexis was heading for. "She's kind of in love with the private investigator business."

"But it's-" Callie breaks off, stands abruptly. "Alexis! I _love_ those cute little reindeer ornaments you made. How adorable. Better than baby pictures." She runs around the couch and embraces Alexis, dwarfing the girl a little. When they release, she hooks her arm through Alexis's and pulls her to the tree.

Callie is more around Alexis somehow, more animated, more vibrant, more interesting.

Kate's glad to see that. Alexis has been taken down off the pedestal of her own making, allowed herself imperfections, and in turn she's made life better for someone else too.

Castle sinks down to the couch beside her, carefully, easing back into the cushions. Not just for himself, mostly for her she thinks. He's sitting very close. He takes her hand and kisses her knuckles.

"I have something for you."

She glances at him in surprise; he's already releasing her hand and beginning the effort of standing. It's always harder for her to get up than it is for him, and lately he's outstripped her in so much of the healing process.

She's tried not to feel abandoned. He's leaving all the same.

"Wait, where are you going?" she says, leaning forward, her breath catching on too-tight lungs. "Rick-"

"To get your present. The girls brought it up with them."

 _Women,_ she thinks idly, but he's already moving around the couch and heading for the back sunroom. She remembers Callie putting things back there, but she assumed at the time it was more of their belongings from storage. Now that the loft has been rented out, Alexis brings a few things every trip. Their old life is following them.

She can't fathom what he might have bought for her. It was his idea to downplay the holiday, to bring family to the Hamptons for a kind of vacation instead of a big thing. Her father is coming up in the morning with Martha; they'll spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them.

Callie is perched on the ottoman, Alexis standing just behind her, and they both have equally exhilarated looks of anticipation on their faces, watching her. Kate wonders if she ought to be standing for this, but she can't bear to start the process of getting up, not when the rum has finally smoothed out her ragged edges.

She can hear Castle coming back down the hall, something else, some kind of struggle about it she can't understand, and she turns her head to look.

"I'll take this," Alexis suddenly says, just at her ear, and plucks the hot chocolate right out of her fingers. She sets it aside, on the far table by the door, pushing a space for it amidst the detritus of their walks.

Castle steps inside the spacious living room, a huge beast squirming in his arms, and suddenly a massive dog flips half out of a blanket and drops straight down on the couch.

Kate can't breathe.

It's huge. Black and brown, a tail that whips back and forth. It whines and prances on the cushion, apparently needing to get used to the lack of immediate resistance, and then it barks short and rough in a bid for attention, or maybe to ask _what now_.

It's a full grown dog.

"Castle," she chokes out.

The dog picks up its ears, two dark ears with brown coloring down its face, and it cocks his head at her. Eye to eye on the couch.

She swallows and pats her lap. "Come - come here."

The dog bounds towards her, the cushions obviously doing their part to absorb most of the energy, but then it launches into her lap, licking and delicately biting her chin, her fingers, her wrists. She isn't sure whether to laugh or freeze up, her body sparking with little flares of pain. But the rest of her is engaged with the huge dog.

"He's German Shepherd mix," Castle says, beaming. "Three years old. I adopted him from the Hamptons Animal Rescue. He's had his shots and he's been fixed. He's just - too friendly, they said, and he doesn't like stairs. Someone abandoned him. I..."

"Oh, God, I love him," Kate laughs, her face full of brown and black happy dog. She feels achingly tired, and the effects of the rum are definitely gone, but the dog doesn't care that she can barely move, that she's ginger and breathless and hardly able to withstand the affection.

He's sprawling himself over her legs, entirely too big, and nosing in under her arm for more petting.

"His name is Chaplin."

"Oh, God, seriously?" Kate glances up at him, recalling the other two in the room as well, but both Callie and Alexis look like they're holding a collective breath for her sake. _Chaplin._

"I wanted to start," he tells her, drawing her eyes back to him. The earnest _want_ on his face. "I wanted to start regardless of the timing. Kids deserve a dog."

She presses her lips together to keep from crying, but it doesn't matter. The dog is licking her cheeks anyway.

"Okay, Chap," she murmurs, stroking back along his head to his collar. A soft leather collar that jingles with his new tags. "Good boy, Chaplin. It's okay. You're home now."

 **x**


	6. Into Winter

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _You have woken. But no one has woken. You are changed,  
but the light of change is bitter, the changing_  
 _is the threshold into winter._

 _Joseph Fasano, Testimony_

* * *

 **VI. Into Winter**

 **x**

They don't sleep. Sleep is elusive. She can't feel him beside her right now, just the dog. At least she can hear them both breathing. If she concentrates, she can hear Rick just on the other side.

It's not a lullaby, but it's soothing in its own way.

"Do you think she's in love?"

Kate turns her head only marginally, sees his profile in the darkness. The dog is between them on the bed; she can see Rick over the twitch of an ear. "In love? She's finishing college. She's more than she was. I think she's trying to figure out who she is."

Something rumbles in his chest. She wonders if it bothers him, Alexis and another woman, or if he's just being a dad.

"I worry about her," he sighs. "I don't want her to think I'm... moving on without her."

"With me?"

He sighs again.

She realizes she's petting the dog. Chaplin. He's a good dog. They've had him a little over a week, Christmas feels like ages ago, the girls have left for the city. "You're not moving on from your daughter, Rick. We are, hopefully, moving on. Healing. Figuring out who _we_ are too."

He chuckles. "Yeah. You're right about that."

"Do _you_ think she's in love?"

"I have no idea," he says. She thinks he's smiling. "She used to be... crazy about boys. Not boy-crazy, not like that. But she would get all flustered and gooey and talk incessantly."

"So?"

"So... I don't know."

"You think it makes it less real somehow?"

"No," he confirms. "That's not what I mean. She put herself out for boys. She's not for Callie. I think that means something."

"She's being herself, you mean."

"Or the version of herself that... that I saw when she was a little girl. Does that make sense?" He heaves a sigh and turns onto his side, his bad side, just to look at her. The dog between them. "When she was about four, she would ask me to tell her a story. And I did, any time of day. It made me feel special, that I could do that for her where other fathers couldn't. Or wouldn't."

Her heart thrums in her chest whenever he talks about raising his daughter. She wonders if he knows how much it gets to her. "That's sweet."

"And then she turned five," Castle says, as if in mourning. "And she began correcting my grammar and fixing my plot holes."

She laughs. She can't help it; her laughter is light and breathless because of the scars, but strangely, for the first time, it doesn't hurt so much.

"Thanks. Laugh at my pain."

"You were the one who told me her first word was denouement. Like you were proud of it, Castle."

"It wasn't. It was _mama._ "

That shuts her up, laughter ceasing. "Oh. Rick." She releases the dog's fur and fumbles over Chaplin for her husband's hand, grips him by the wrist when she finds him. The dog squirms beneath her arm and then wriggles out, pads to the end of the bed and drops to the floor.

She's still hanging on to Castle, but now their fingers lace. She can feel his pulse thumping in his wrist.

"I saw her today like I did when she was four," he says, a slow breath out. "Before she cared about feasibility and verb tense. When she could still suspend disbelief."

"Magic," she whispers.

It wasn't really _Kate_ he was mourning all those years ago when she scoffed at Santa Claus or raised her eyes at his improbable theories. It was his own daughter's growing up. She just happened to be bound up in it.

"You know they'll do it to you too," she husks. She feels tired, suddenly, and old. But contrarily alive in every nerve ending in her body. "Our kids will grow up too, Rick, and you'll have to let them."

"That's okay," he whispers. "That's okay so long as they find a way to be four years old again."

 **x**

She _hates_ today. Hates the day, and the sun that's shining despite the winter, and the whole idiotic layout of this damn massive house. She hates the stupid dog that won't leave her alone and the husband that disappeared on her this morning.

Chaplin is gonna get her killed. Or she's gonna kill him _._

He's so eager, so needy, wanting to be close to her. He keeps threading through her legs as she walks - and not that steadily - through the living room. He bounds away after a noise and then comes racing back, bowling into her. She's had to clutch for the door frame or lunge for the back of a chair just to stay standing.

"Stupid _dog_ ," she hisses. "You're worse than Castle."

Chaplin barks and wags his tail at her, and then he makes a tight circle around her legs, slinking side to side like a crazy thing. She grabs hold of the bookcase, lifts her foot slowly to knee him off her.

Chaplin skitters back, his mouth spread wide and his tongue hanging out like he's laughing.

"What a stupid dog." She pushes him back with her foot. "Go find your daddy. Make him deal with you."

Chaplin yips like a puppy and circles her again. As if to say _hurry up._ But he's not a puppy; he's five years old. He ought to know better than this.

"No wonder they got rid of you," she growls.

Chaplin's dumb tail swishes back and forth, back and forth, that idiotic grin across his muzzle. He gives another short bark and tears out of the living room, and she sighs.

No wonder Castle picked this one. The dog is just like him. Eager to please, stupidly loyal, wants to be right up against her. When he's not racing away to investigate the latest shiny-

A rush of toenails on wood floor is her only warning before she's barreled into from behind. She was only a few steps into the kitchen and she goes down hard on her knees, pitching forward. She tries to catch herself with her hands but something cracks inside her chest. She gasps, crumpling to the floor.

She pulls up into the fetal position. The damn dog climbs her legs and tries to wriggle down into her. He whines and she elbows him away, pain arrowing sharply with every breath. She closes her eyes to keep from falling apart.

Chaplin licks her chin and his back foot digs into her thigh.

" _Sit_ ," she snarls, jerking away from him.

A whine. The silence of sudden obedience.

She rolls to her back, but she can't yet straighten her legs. She presses a shaky hand over her mouth and opens her eyes.

She breathes.

When she tilts her chin, she sees Chaplin sitting on his hindquarters, quivering with held back energy, head cocked to inspect her. She glares at him and he goes down to his belly, all the way down, his head on his front paws, eyes on her.

He whimpers.

She feels like whimpering too.

But instead she digs an elbow under her and leverages herself halfway up, manages to curl on her side and come - achingly - to her knees. She's breathing hard from exertion, but she plants a palm on the kitchen tile and reaches out with her bad side, fingers flat.

Chaplin whines. His nose nudges into her fingers.

She's trembling, reaching for him, but she pushes forward just enough to stroke between his ears. Chaplin's eyes slit and his head leans into her touch.

Just like Rick. So grateful for love.

Kate curls forward, bowing her head to Chaplin's. "Good dog. You're a good dog. Just rowdy." She feels exhausted and it's barely nine in the morning. "We'll fix that, okay? You and me. Get you trained."

But first she needs to lay her head down and breathe through this.

 **x**

Castle keeps his distance this morning.

January 9th.

He asked her once a few years back about her mother's death date, what her preferences were. She insisted she wanted him side by side with her, but on the day, she was ambivalent to his presence. Later years he's done what he's doing now - staying away until darkness falls at around five - and then finding her again. Usually bearing gifts.

Since she's homebound, and she doesn't have the Twelfth to draw her focus, he alters his plans only slightly. He woke before her and made a cold breakfast, leaving it out on the kitchen counter for her to 'find.' (He does that every year, coffee in the carafe on the warming plate, fruit in a container, dry cereal.) This year there's no fresh fruit, but he made kale smoothies and left hers chilled in a thermos.

He knows she found it only because he came through later when the coast was clear and the thermos was empty, washed out, and nestled in the top rack of the dish washer.

But he won't wait until nightfall to come after her. He gives her four hours alone, to make peace or spill out her grief, however she manages to manage this time, and then he comes after her. Purposefully.

He knows where she is on the grounds because he can hear the dog from time to time. He was hearing her in the house while he was upstairs, organizing their stuff. He cleaned out bedrooms to give their boxes space, but he still hasn't managed to open up their boxes and unpack their belongings - the knick-knacks, the decorative items, the little things that usually transform a place into home.

The Hamptons house is a vacation getaway, a refuge even. But it isn't _home._

He hasn't been able to settle their things into the mostly empty guest rooms because they are, in essence, guests here. This isn't permanent. This is a season.

Castle has been feeling a long stronger these days, and even though it's already one o'clock in the afternoon, he still feels capable. At this rate, he won't fade until dinner time, and he knows the weekly routine of physical therapy has given him this endurance.

Just like Kate keeps telling him.

But he picks his way across the expansive lawn, still green with thin winter grass, going slowly and carefully. The wind brings the sound of the dog back to him, something joyful in that bark, and he's grateful she brought Chaplin out here with her.

They aren't at the pool, which is where he was expecting to find them. He trudges forward, pausing every now and then to orient.

The winter air throws the sound of her voice, magnifies the dog's barking. This time he sticks to the winding path, despite its wandering, to prevent himself from missing his footing and rolling down the steepest part of the bank. He can see the water and their beach, and now he can see her too.

She's standing stiffly in her coat, but there's a softness to the line of her arm, a kind of willingness to give. She holds her fingers together as if snapping, a command on her lips, but the roar of the ocean catches her words and drowns them.

The dog bounces up and barks - loudly enough that Castle can hear it - but in the next instant, Kate draws her hand in to her lips and the dog's muzzle snaps shut. Almost as if she's shushed him.

Huh.

Castle makes his way down the steps, hanging onto the railing in a way he never has before. A way he wonders if, some time in the next few decades, he might find himself doing again, being forced to use support because his balance and strength can't be trusted. An eighty year old man.

At least he has the practice. Frustrating, irritating, debilitating practice. _Failing_ to be able-bodied is almost worse than the pain that accompanies the trying.

Chaplin hears him first, and the dog's whole body pivots in a tight circle to face him. He's sandy and matted, but he has one of those doggy grins, his tongue hanging out. He barks in greeting, and Kate lifts her head.

She's glowing. Alive, bundled against the wind, scarf wound around her throat. Her hair is pulled back in an improvised knot but strands are teased by the wind, caught against her lips. She drags one back, tucks it behind her ear. "Rick."

"I made lunch," he offers, standing still across from her. But his curiosity wins out over consideration. "What are you two doing down here?"

"Practicing," she grins. _Beams._ She snaps her fingers and Chaplin races to her side, tearing through the five yards of sand between them.

Just when Castle moves to stop the dog, Kate holds up a staying hand. One word under her breath, and the dog jerks to a halt, panting, eager.

"How..." He stares at Chaplin, and then lifts his gaze to hers. "How in the world?"

She laughs, and the sound breaks Chaplin's concentration, causing him to jump Kate in his excitement, knocking her back. Castle moves forward and grabs Chaplin by the collar even as he catches Kate, his arm banding tight at her back, holding her up.

She clutches him, a ragged breath in and out again. "I'm okay, it's okay. Getting used to it. He does it a lot."

"Shit," he husks. "Chaplin. Get _down."_ And shockingly, Chaplin drops to his feet, and then down to his haunches. Castle is so stunned that he nearly lets go of Kate.

But she's gripping him too hard for that. "I've been - training him. I think someone tried. Someone was teaching him, but he's just so energetic. He gets excited and does stuff like that, and it kinda ruins it."

"He's going to knock you down," he growls. He should've thought before picking the saddest looking eager thing in the rescue shelter. Chaplin was just so _loving_.

He still is. Dancing around them. Tail wagging. Thinking it's all a wonderful game.

But Kate-

When Castle glances at her, she's still glowing. He can see the tight pinch of pain at the corners of her mouth, the slant of her eyes, but she looks proud. Happy.

It's the anniversary of her mother's death, she's struggling with recovery from two debilitating gunshot wounds, and yet she looks _content._

"Kate?"

"Charlie's a good dog," she says. "Aren't you, boy?"

"Charlie?"

"Charlie Chaplin." She's untangling from him to pet the dog, a kind of drive-by petting as Charlie Chaplin races around them in the sand, dodging side to side, playing.

"Of course," he grunts. "What an immature-"

"No, you did good, Rick." Kate grips a fistful of Castle's sweater to straighten up, grinning at him to soften her words. "He's smart, and he wants to learn. He won't be immature forever. Believe me. I know something about that."

He watches Chaplin chase the waves against the shore, barking as if the water is his enemy. "He's worse than a little kid."

Kate laughs. Easy, light. She steps into his body and his arms are suddenly filled with her. She kisses his neck. "You would know."

"Well. My kid was never this... energetic."

"I was talking about you, babe," she chuckles. He can feel her smile at his cheekbone. "But you're right. Charlie's like a dry run. If we can corral Chaplin, we can corral all your mini-mes."

His throat closes up and he coughs. " _All_ my - all?"

"I'm not making my kid grow up an only child," she mutters.

"No, right. Of course not." He has that strange flutter in his chest that comes from being understood, that comes from having a _partner_...

"Think we can do it?" she says softly.

"Which part? Chaplin or all our little dopplegangers?"

"Mm, yes."

He laughs then, a wide laugh that echoes in the waves crashing on shore, in the dog's splashing, and most importantly, in Kate's cold lips against his face. She kisses him, still clutching him tightly, and he shivers with pleasure.

She leans back, her eyes studying him. "Don't think I don't know what you've done for me today. Giving me something else to think about, something bigger than myself to concentrate on. Thank you. Today of all days... I needed you exactly as you've been."

 **x**


	7. Tread Softly

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  
I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams._

 _WB Yeats, 'Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven'_

* * *

 **VII. Tread Softly**

 **x**

He wakes from a nightmare of blood and suffocation, flinging himself out of bed and lurching for the bathroom. He dry heaves in the sink, his knees hitting the pedestal, clutching the edges to keep from going down.

He turns on the faucet and cups water in his hand, letting it spill over his fingers to cool his blood. And then he sips, trying to take it slowly.

"Rick?"

He clears his throat, twists off the water, head bowed. "Yeah."

"Dream?"

"Yeah." He closes his eyes, but he can't stay that way, the darkness bright with red-eyed demons.

He flinches when her hand comes to his back. She lays her cheek to the curve of his spine, her hands cold under the waist of his pajama pants. "Sneak up on you?"

"Yeah," he gets out. Tries again. "Didn't think you could move that fast."

"Tried not to think about it. Go faster if I don't psych myself out."

"Yeah." He sounds like an imbecile.

"Dog's worried about you."

He turns his head, sees Chaplin on the floor at the foot of the bed. It's a miracle Castle didn't step on him. "Good dog," he husks. Chaplin bounces up as if released from a spell, and he comes bounding into the bathroom, running into the back of Castle's legs.

Kate nudges, Chaplin nudges too, and Castle is guided to sit on the toilet seat. He's still shaking. His scars, the bullet site and the surgical sites, they burn.

She goes down on her knees - _God_ , down on the tile, _Kate, no_ , he murmurs - but she leans her cheek against his inside thigh. Her arm wraps around his calf and the dog wriggles in between his legs, and she pets Chaplin's nose and neck, scratching his ruff.

The rhythm of it begins to soothe even him, and Castle drops a hand to the top of her head, still sweating out his terror, still shaking.

She lifts her chin and kisses his wrist. "Your pulse is fast."

"Yeah."

"You'll feel better if you can talk to me."

"Yeah," he says automatically, shakes himself. "Sorry. I..."

"Give it a minute."

He nods, his throat squeezing.

"What if I talk?" she murmurs. She's petting Chaplin, nose to nose with the dog, and there's something about her focus being on the dog and not him that helps. He doesn't have to bear the brunt of her attention; he doesn't have to be responsible for keeping up both their spirits.

"You can talk," he says finally. A question in it.

"You always talk me through a panic attack," she answers. "It helps me, hearing your voice. It doesn't stop it, doesn't make it go away. But it's easier to hear you right there with me."

"Yeah," he croaks. He might cry.

"You know I don't dream," she says. She's half-cooing in Chaplin's face. "I've never remembered my dreams. I guess I don't sleep well enough for that. But you say I toss and turn so-"

"You do," he gets out, something releasing in his throat. He swallows.

"So I must have them. I just can't - find them again. I feel like when I met you, you showed me how."

"What?" His breath whistles through his teeth. "Showed you-"

"Dreams again. How to _have_ a dream, and want it. Instead of walling myself off and being so rigid."

He studies her. Something about the lilt in her voice makes him pay attention. She's sober, but she's watching the dog.

"You gave me back my mother's-"

"God, no," he croaks. He can't have started this, it can't be his fault-

"Yes," she insists, softly. "Not like you're thinking. You're not responsible for my choices, or for the terrible things that have been done to us. But you made me open my eyes again, take my head out of the sand. And then you stuck by me through it, even when I did my best to kick free of you. After I made detective, I hit a wall, Rick, and I hit it so hard that I broke. So I just - disappeared inside anything that would hide me. The job first, and then the rules, the pointless relationships, my tight-fisted hold on control."

He struggles for a breath. "Kate."

"You rocked my world, Rick Castle."

He cracks up, leaning in hard on his knees, roughly pressing a kiss to her temple. She's smiling, all Mona Lisa, and yet she lifts her hand from the dog and caresses his ear. Like she's petting him.

"I'm sorry your dreams are so bad," she whispers. "I wish I could give you half what you've given me, numb you to them just as you've made me alive."

"Oh, God, woman, you're going to make me cry."

She laughs then, but it's so soft, like a breath, and she kisses him. "Come back to bed?"

"Yeah," he finds himself saying. "Come on, Charlie. Back to bed."

 **x**

After physical therapy, he finds her father in the sunroom reading a book by DH Lawrence. Jim glances up and sees him coming, smiles, lays the book in his lap.

"Racy," Castle says, still breathing hard as he reads the title.

"I suppose at the time of publication, they thought so," Jim answers. His eyes are kind. Castle has never been able to get over the difference between Jim Beckett and his own father. Jim is invested. Jackson Hunt is just...

Never around. "Is she out there?" he says, gesturing towards the back lawn.

"In the hot tub. You look like you should join her. PT rough?"

"Today it was," he admits. "Had to leave my car in the parking lot. Thought I might pass out."

"Oh, Rick. I could have picked you up."

"No, it's okay." He can't sit down. If he sits down, he's not sure he'll be able to get back up. "The clinic called me a cab. She goes later this afternoon, so-"

"Ah. I'll drive you both, then. And you can drive her home?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine by then." He hopes. He's wrecked. "I'm gonna - sack out, actually. Do you need anything before I go?"

"You've got that the wrong way around, Rick. Do _you_ need anything? Have you had any water after physical therapy?"

"I finished off a bottle," he admits, waving off his father-in-law. "I appreciate it, but I'm good. Tell Kate, when you see her, that I'm napping?"

"Will do. Definitely. I was only going to give her another twenty minutes."

He nods, feels heavy all over. He doesn't move, even though he knows he should.

Jim stands up, puts the book aside, comes to him in the doorway. Like he wants to help. Like he thinks Castle might pass out.

He might.

He's swaying on his feet when Jim lays a hand on his good shoulder. "You look exhausted, but I have to say, Rick, you look a lot better than you did even at Christmas."

"Yeah?" he says roughly. He doesn't know why it gets to him.

"You've gained some weight back - muscle."

"That's the PT," he gets out. "Killing me with the weight training."

"That's good. Muscle is good. Kate..."

"She'll get there," he promises. He doesn't know why he's promising. But he knows the steel strength in his wife. The determination.

Burke told him to talk to her about it. He should. He really should.

"She'll get there. I have no doubt," Jim says, shaking his head a little. "I've seen that will of hers at work."

Castle gives a wan smile, but he doesn't move for the bedroom. "I think I'll go down there instead. Find her."

Something lights up in Jim's face. As if he's been angling for that all along. "You do that."

"What were you going to say?" Castle asks, shifting forward on his feet. He can go out through the door in the sunroom, circle back along the lawn. But Jim's hesitance stays him. "Before, when you said muscle is good but Kate-?"

Jim doesn't smile. His eyes fall from Castle's.

He thinks he knows. Burke warned him last night in their weekly phone therapy session. He has to start _talking_ to her. "She looks hollowed out," he says.

Jim flinches. "I - wasn't going to say that. Just."

"It's eating her up," Castle sighs, blowing out a breath. "I know. I'm going down there. I'll find her." He shifts past her father and shuffles for the door, his heart rate kicking up hard with the exertion of walking. PT really sand-bagged him. The hot tub is alluring, but he'd probably drown.

With his hand on the door knob, he hears Jim clear his throat behind him.

"Bring her back with you," Jim says quietly. "Bring her back."

 **x**

He changes in the poolhouse, board shorts and one of the heavier robes, but it's an effort to stay standing. His whole body aches, he hasn't been sleeping well, he wants to lie down.

But instead he walks the circumference of the pool and heads for the hot tub at the far end. The jets are on low, bubbling and frothing the water, and the January winter light is bleak enough that she's turned on the pool's lamps.

She's submerged up to her neck, her head propped up on a towel on the curved edge of the tub. Her lashes are heavy, but he thinks her eyes are open anyway. She's wearing a one-piece swim suit, brown with glints of gold, her robe in a puddle nearby.

When he's within speaking distance, she lifts a hand from the water in greeting. No words.

He sinks down to the edge of the tub, right beside her head, putting his feet in, hissing at the temperature difference. It burns.

"I was cold," she defends. "Couldn't get warm." Her arm wraps around his ankle. "Almost not worth it, having to get out."

"Mm." And when he realizes that sounds condemning, he tugs her ear. "Hot as you like it, Kate."

"How was PT?" She rubs her fingers up and down his calf. Trickles of heat where the water bubbles, ticklish. "Rick. You look exhausted. Come on in, it's warm-"

"I'm afraid I'll fall asleep," he admits. "Drown."

She shivers, leans her cheek against his knee. "I wouldn't let you drown, you know."

"Hurt yourself trying to get me out," he says, attempting to chuckle. "I'm okay. I've spent the last two hours pouring sweat. The cold feels good."

"It's barely forty degrees," she protests, but falls into silence. She angles her head back against the towel, her eyes open and looking up at him. "Suit yourself."

He smiles, touches a strand of her hair where it snakes at her eyebrow. Her hair is curly with the humidity of the hot tub. "Did you swim?"

"Did my exercises," she confirms. "What's that look for."

"Just thinking," he says, like a promise. "Not taking you for granted. Appreciating all I have right here before me."

A pink heat blooms at her throat, her lashes dip in response to him. Under the water, her knee comes up slowly and bumps his shin. Her fingers at his ankle. The shadow of her body beneath the water is like an arrow in his guts.

She's been drinking those kale protein shakes in the morning, plus their grand dinners, and the energy bars that marathon runners swear by. She still looks hollow.

"You know when I was... still in the hospital, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck," he starts, falters. How does he explain? How can he possibly explain the difference between wildest dreams and-

"What's going on," she says, not a question but a demand.

"No, nothing's going on," he says. He stops touching her hair because he knows it annoys her after a while. Instead he shrugs off the robe, the cold biting his bare skin, and he pushes off against the tiled edge, sinks down into the hot tub.

She smiles, an eyebrow lifting as he groans. "Told you."

He laughs, air caught in his lungs as the heat wraps around him. "Yeah, you were right. Much better in here."

"Don't pass out on me."

"Gonna try not to." He sinks down to the bench across from her, props his feet up right beside her hip. She lays a hand on his feet and plays, scratching her nails lightly at his shin.

Silence resumes between them. The hot tub bubbles, the joy of water along his shoulders. He doesn't let himself lean back, keeping carefully upright so he won't fall asleep, but the heat is working in his aching chest.

"Good, huh?" She leans forward in some kind of thoughtless gesture, but draws up short with a gasp, teeth catching her bottom lip. "Ouch."

"Slow movements," he cautions her. "The hot tub loosens you up but it also means you can pull something-"

"I know," she grits out, shakes her head. "I know. I just - got excited."

He chuckles, watching her. "Excited. Did you now."

She shoots him a glare. Shifts back slowly to the edge of the hot tub. Beautiful when she's angry. Beautiful when she's determined and wants something. A force. A wilted force, these days, her beauty whitewashed by exhaustion and PT and stiffness and insomnia and pain meds.

"I don't need you to try so hard," he blurts out. Her eyes jerk over to his and he winces, tries to smooth that out. "We're both alive, we're here - you know how amazing that is? You've been shot four times-"

"Four?" she murmurs, her hand pressing against her sternum. Breathing slowly.

" _Four_. You stitched your own _wound_. How do you not remember-"

"Oh, that was-" She stops, stops shaking her head like it's nothing. Her eyes scan his body in the tub. "You've been shot twice, you know." She looks suddenly as weary as he feels. "It's not like I'm-"

"That's not what I meant," he interrupts. "Not keeping score here. I only want you to know that I'm not taking this for granted. Having a life with you."

"I know," she says, softly. "I know you're not. You've been so good to me, Rick. Patient with me." She shifts, frowns with frustration in her eyes. She grips the hair on his knee and tugs. "Get back over here, I can't move."

He chuckles, but he removes his feet from the bench and carefully slides back across the hot tub to sit beside her. She leans against him, and he feels how slight she is, how narrow her frame. "You don't have to try so hard, Kate." He presses a kiss to the top of her head. Her hair smells like chlorine and winter woods. Cold. "It's not all on you to make our dreams come true."

She stiffens.

Dr Burke was right. Of course he was.

"I'm not - pregnant yet," she gets out. Like it's a failure.

"I know, and it's okay," he promises. He wraps a hand around her knee, smoothing his thumb over her skin, water and heat and the resistance of her body. "It's okay if we can't get pregnant. It doesn't change anything, how much I love you. How grateful I am to have this life with you."

"I really - I wanted to-"

"It's not _over_ ," he stresses, his head ducked down to speak right at her temple. "You have to cut yourself some slack. It hasn't even been a year, and we're both still doing the best we can to stay upright. We're nowhere near ready for a baby."

She gives a hitching noise, and he really hopes she's not crying. He's been such an ass, filling her head with his dreams but not giving her any kind of grounding in reality. Like he's the architect but she's the builder - and he's put it all on her to do the work.

"But. I want us to have babies," she whispers.

"I know." He kisses the crinkled corner of her eye. "I know. I do too. But it will happen in its own time."

"But our timing _sucks_. We never-"

"Not _our_ timing. Life, just life. Whatever happens will happen. And we'll make it work."

She pulls away from him, presses a hand to her eyes. "I'm so _tired_ of making it work. I just want it to be _now_ already."

Castle shifts off the seat, water bubbling around him as he eases to his knees in the bottom of the hot tub. He feels old, and break-able, and he thinks that's just his heart. He faces her, on his knees, his hands bracketing her hips, and their heads are about even with the way she's slumped back.

"Kate. Look at me."

She does, with a lot of mulish reluctance, and he gives her a smile, feeling hopeful despite how much he dreaded this conversation earlier.

"It's not about work, not this. That's what I'm trying to say. We have enough to work on right now that we don't need this to be one more thing. I want us to make love when we feel like it, and if we don't feel like it - no pressure."

"Was I pressuring you?" she murmurs, lips twisting.

"Not quite." A little bit. "When do I ever say no?"

"Plenty," she says, with enough heat that he laughs. Surprised by her.

"Alright, I deserved that. The video games are an addiction. I'll go to AA, get my priorities straight. But in the meantime, I just want us to take it as it comes. Can we do that? Slow down. Stop trying so hard, working so hard at something that will come soon enough."

Kate draws her hand down her face, drops of water in her hair, down her cheek. She gives him a frustrated look. "How do you know?" she says finally. "How do you know it will come at all?"

"What I know is that it's not all on you. Let's heal, feel strong again, gain some weight-"

She slaps his pinching fingers, but something like a smile flits across her face. And then she scowls at him. "I'm just... tired of not having what I want. What _we_ want. Always putting it off because some case interferes, something is always more important-"

"What's most important here is us," he says firmly. _Her_. She is what's most important but he knows better than to say that. She needs to be healing, not running herself ragged trying to chase his dreams. Their dreams. They'll get there.

Kate slumps forward, her chin against his shoulder, her arms sliding around his waist. He pulls her into his hips, holding her with the helpful buoy of the water.

"It's okay," he whispers, kissing her ear. Her cheek. "It's okay to press pause on the trying, the work, and just _live_ for a while."

"Not too long," she says. Tears in her throat. "Please. Just-"

"Okay. I know. Promise." He cups the back of her head, pressing her against him, and he feels her whole body release, falling apart. "Oh, Kate. It's not supposed to be this hard, honey."

And then she cries.

 **x**


	8. Loosens

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _The fist clenched round my heart  
loosens a little, and I gasp_  
 _brightness; but it tightens_  
 _again. When have I ever not loved_  
 _the pain of love?_

 _-Derek Walcott, The Fist_

* * *

 **VIII. Loosens**

 **x**

Kate stands abruptly when Castle comes through the doorway. She feels the pull on her torso from the movement, but she can't spare it a thought. She focuses on Castle, tension burrowing in her neck and shoulders until he gives her a weak grin.

She meets him in the middle of the waiting room, takes him by the wrist. "How-"

"Not a heart attack," he confesses immediately. Shakes his head. "Pulled a few muscles. He's sending me back to the physical therapist."

Pulled muscles.

"In the middle of the night?" she husks. She's wearing pajamas under her coat. Kate is standing in the emergency clinic in one of Castle's plaid shirts, her yoga pants, and _his_ old beach coat - for a pulled muscle?

"He says I probably rolled over on my shoulder in my sleep, that it was most likely damaged before that."

She swallows hard, frustration and grief and panic, all of it.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"No," she blurts out, lifting her eyes to him. "No, don't be sorry. _God._ I thought you were having a heart attack, all the stress and-" She blinks hard, despising herself for this overwhelming urge to cry. "Did he give you anything for the pain?"

"Yeah, a couple shots in my shoulder and a prescription for something a little stronger. I don't have any refills on the old one."

She draws her hand up the back of his arm, concern filling her. "Did you already pay?"

"Yeah, back there at the check out window."

"You need help with your coat?"

He winces. "I'm too hot to put it back on," he says, shaking his head like a reluctant little boy. "I'll just carry it."

She doesn't love that answer, but she can see the rings on his t-shirt where his sweat soaked through. He must have been in a lot of pain. All across his chest, at least, so he thought it was his heart. Stabbing pain down his arm; he couldn't even make a fist on their drive in. She plied him with aspirin and drove like a maniac the eleven miles to the clinic because she knows firsthand the response time out here.

"Alright, let's go then," she answers. "I'll stop by the all night pharmacy and drop off your prescription on the way."

He swallows hard and nods, and when she turns for the door, he follows her. The minor med only has a few people waiting, and she winds her way through the empty seats towards the exit. He's shuffling behind her, and he must be exhausted.

Outside, the wind blasts them. She wraps his old coat tighter around her frame, feels for his key in the pocket to be certain she still has it. Castle is breathing hard by the time they make it to the car. The doors unlock automatically, sensing the fob in her pocket, and she opens his door first, as if she can at all help him.

"I'm okay. Shots have helped a lot." He's hesitating on the pavement, the light of the security lamp washing out his face.

"Get in, Rick." She gestures with her chin. "Sleep on the drive home."

He studies her a moment, and she has no idea what he's looking for; she's still shaking somewhere deep inside her, feeling time slip through her fingers, and if he sees that in her eyes, let him.

He gets in the car. She moves around the back and gets in on the driver's side, pulls on her seatbelt. She touches the start button and the engine purrs with life.

He lays his hand over hers on the gearshift. "I'm okay."

"I know you are." She lifts his hand and briefly kisses his knuckles, and then she puts the car in reverse.

 **x**

Castle adjusts the sling and scratches at the spot near his armpit where it itches so very badly. She's looking at him.

"I played my word," he reminds her.

"I'm thinking." She puts her eyes back on her Scrabble tiles, her chin in her hand. He's pretty sure she's thinking alright, but not about what word she's going to beat him with.

He's won twice now. She's definitely distracted. He tallies his points anyway and makes note of his score on the pad using his left hand. The number is crooked and shaky, no matter how much he practices.

Castle puts the pencil down and scratches at his armpit again, adjusting the sling.

She shifts in her chair. The sky is grey and hazy outside, miserable. He's been banned from the hot tub while he's on muscle relaxants. Not a heart attack. Spasms. A pulled muscle in his chest. Not his most shining moment.

"I played my word," she says.

He glances the board. _Inveigle._ He scoffs, and her lips are twitching, but at least he knows she's in this with him, playing the game.

"How many is that," he mutters.

"I'll write it," she offers. He lifts his eyes for a look, and she smothers a smile into her hand. "You write it then. Thirty-six points."

He picks up the pencil again, works the point back up to his fingers. He presses the tip to the page. Maps out the number three's positioning in his head.

"Oh, my God, Castle. Let me just keep score."

"No." He starts the top of the three. "I always keep score."

She says nothing to that, and he works on getting the numbers down in something approximating normal. A few of his attempts have been oversized, ridiculous. The sling gets in his way, but it's there precisely for this - to keep him from moving his shoulder. Any time he tries to do something with his right, she doesn't _say_ anything, but he feels her censure.

But his left hand is terrible at this. He should've kept score on the laptop.

"It's dreary out there," she sighs.

He glances her way. She's leaning back in the kitchen chair, her eyes on the sliding glass doors.

"Dreary in here too," he mutters.

She startles, her eyes jerking to his. "I - no." She sighs. "Yeah. It is, isn't it?"

"You've been trying to cheer me up by throwing our games."

She lifts one slim eyebrow. "Not... consciously."

He laughs, shakes his head. "Even Chaplin is staying away from us."

She glances over her shoulder through the doorway. The dog lifts his head from his paws and whines, tail thumping out of sight. But he doesn't come near. Kate mutters. "Dumb dog. What does he know?"

He watches the faint flush climb her neck, wonders if it's shame or embarrassment. "Let's get out of here. I'm sick of this place. Aren't you?"

"You mean - go out for dinner or... leave the Hamptons?"

He stiffens. "Dinner. What were you thinking?"

She shrugs. "Who says we have to stay?"

"We have PT and exercises and-"

"So what. A road trip, Castle. A couple days, four. Go somewhere, get out of our own heads. Why not?"

He stares at her, the idea clicking over in his brain, starting something. "We really could. Go somewhere."

Her lips twitch. "We could. We are adults."

"Where will we go?"

"We could go upstate, the lake, or go south, head for the city, or Philly, or Baltimore. Or DC."

"We could," he murmurs, the prospects opening up before him. "Remember that wine bar in DC near your place?"

"Yeah," she grins. "And the art museum where you convinced me-"

"Oh, yeah," he grins, shifting in the chair. "And the park later too, convinced you then."

"No, I convinced you," she smirks.

Castle sits back, grinning wider. "Yeah, you did. Beautiful park. Chaplin would like it - and we can't take the dog into the museum." As if called by Castle's enthusiasm, Chaplin comes trotting through the kitchen and lays his head in Kate's lap, whining for attention.

She strokes behind his ears. "Chap would love it upstate too," she murmurs, lifting her eyes to his. "Or even - a drive, you know? Hang his head out the window."

He shivers. "Too cold for that. But a cabin on the lake. He could chase the birds, bark at the squirrels."

She grins, scratching Chaplin's ears. "A drive along the coast. All those great restaurants with their fresh catch of the day. The wine and the water. Drive until we don't feel like driving."

He pushes aside the score pad. "Let's go."

"Right now?" she laughs.

"Yes. Come on. Right now." He stands up, moving around the kitchen table to nudge Chaplin out of her lap. "Pack for a couple days, a week, you choose. You drive. It's not the cross country tour on motorcycles like we talked about, but it's something. We'll go anywhere you like."

"Anywhere?" But she's getting slowly to her feet, fingers trailing over Chaplin's head. "A week. Okay. Okay, let's do it." She lifts and presses a kiss to his mouth, chaste but rough, and then she backs away from him. "I'll pack clothes for us both if you get toiletries. Including all our pills. And Charlie's leash."

"Will do. Now go. I'm going to make us food for the road, take him out one last time. Come on, Chap, come with me."

She gives him a grin with a flash of her teeth and then hurries away, moving for the ground floor bedroom. Their suitcases are still in the closet, half unpacked even after all these months, so he knows it won't take her long.

They're getting out of here.

 **x**

The music is soft, Coltrane turned low on the stereo, and Kate feels easy, relaxed at the wheel. Chaplin keeps nudging his head between their seats for their attention, and Castle will scratch him, pet him, chuckle at his antics. She made him throw a blanket over the backseat, keep Chaplin from scratching the leather.

The windows aren't down, it's too cold for that, but past the glare of her headlights, the night is endless. Sometimes if the road curves just right, they can see the ocean past Castle's window. And the stars above it, bright anchors.

"How're you doing?" Castle asks, wrapping his fingers around her elbow. She smiles. "How are your shoulders, the ribs?"

"Stiffening up," she admits. "But I don't care."

"You will in the morning," he smiles.

Probably so. But she can't make herself worry about tomorrow. It's only eight, and Chaplin goes from window to window in the back, his nose smearing the glass as he looks out. He's excited, and it's infectious.

Castle is pretty happy too. Which makes her feel great. He hums to the saxophone as if singing along; he knows this one as well as she does, she's played it so often. One of her favorite albums. _A Love Supreme._ The shiver of the cymbals as the car glides through the night is like riding one long note to the sax, to the sky.

A ribbon of beautiful sound in the night.

She reads signs in the illumination of her headlights. "There's a bed and breakfast in another ten miles." She checks her rear view mirror, then his face. "If you want."

"Want," he smiles, glancing at her. "Chap probably does too. He's an old man."

"He's not that old," she laughs. She knows what he's been trying to say. "And neither are you."

"Mm, well." He doesn't answer, but he does start stroking his fingers on the inside of her elbow, strokes in time to the piano's delicate sound.

She's filled up. If this is their life from here on out, if this is how it is for them, she can be right with that. She can be _good_ with that.

There's so much love. So much life.

"There's the turn," he says softly over the Coltrane. "On your left."

She flips her signal, slows the car. His fingers release her elbow so she can make the turn. They follow a paved road through the trees, away from the ocean, and Chaplin sticks his wet nose against her elbow, as if reclaiming the spot from Castle.

"Oh, it's big," he rumbles. He leans forward and she scans the road ahead of them, craning her neck to see.

Oh, it is big. Blue shingles siding, she thinks, with five eaves across, though it's hard to see in the darkness. A wrap around porch and the light on. "I hope it's not too late."

"Let's see. Parking is over there."

She's already seen the gravel turnaround, and she pulls in beside a car with license plates from Ohio. When she turns off the car, the dog gives a low woof in his throat and scrambles to one side, pressing his nose to the window.

"Charlie, you excited?" she says, turning around in the driver's seat. He gives a sharper bark and Castle chides him, but she reaches back and ruffles his ear, scratches under his collar. "Come on, Chap. Let's see if they allow dogs."

Before she can open her door, Castle leans over and kisses her, fingers stroking her neck.

She's warm and in love with him, and with his eyes shining across from hers, right here and now, she's not afraid.

 **x**


	9. Yes Of Course

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _My heart is so giant this evening,  
like one of those moons so full_  
 _and beautiful and terrifying_  
 _if you see it when you're getting out_  
 _of the car you have to go inside the house_  
 _and make someone else come out_  
 _and see it for themselves. I want every-_  
 _thing, I admit. I want_ yes of course _  
and I want it all the time. I want_  
 _a clean heart. I want the children_  
 _to sleep and the drought_  
 _to end. I want the rain to come_

 _-_ _Carrie Fountain, First_

* * *

 **IX. Yes Of Course**

 **x**

Castle wakes naturally, sunlight through the flimsy lace curtains. Winter sun, February sun, the days reaching entropy. The bare branches through the narrow window are framing a sky so blue and beautiful that he finds himself reaching for Kate to wake her.

She mumbles, knocks his hand away. It rouses Chaplin from the floor at Kate's side, and he pokes an inquiring nose over the mattress, the bed so tall that the dog is only ears and wagging tail.

"Come here, Chap," he whispers. "Over here."

Chaplin's tail swishes and he obediently circles the foot of the bed, coming to Castle's side. He puts his paws on Castle's chest and licks happily along Castle's neck, certainly a different good morning from the one Rick was hoping for.

"You'll do," he grins, patting Chaplin's side, moving up to scratch under his chin, rubbing his ears back and forth roughly. Chaplin wriggles in closer, stretching to sniff loudly under Castle's arm, as if pointedly. "Alright, alright. I get the hint. I need a shower."

And then Kate rolls into him, reaching across his body for the dog, laying her head on Rick's chest. "Morning, guys."

"Wow, I don't even rate a separate greeting?"

She thumps his ear and nestles closer, one of her legs winding around his. "What's the plan for today?"

"No plan," he says happily. "Though I'm going to take Chaplin out before he ruins the nice Oriental rug in here."

Kate grunts, pushing away from him but not getting very far, not with her range of movement. "Ew, Charlie, you better not pee on their rug. Hurry up, Castle, I want you back in bed with me. Warm me up."

"Yes, ma'am," he smiles, carefully untangling from her long limbs and arranging them back on her side. She only winces a little bit with the movement of his rising, and he wonders if the bed was too soft for her last night, if it can be to blame for the way her ribs seem to hurt her.

Or the four hour drive up the coast. She said she wouldn't regret it, and as she buries her nose in his pillow and sighs, he's glad to see she doesn't.

The dog whines and makes a circle at his feet, pushes himself in between Castle and the side of the bed.

"Alright, Chaplin, I know." He scratches the dog between the ears and pats his side, stroking back the fur. "Let me find pants and your leash."

"Leash is hanging from the bathroom door knob," Kate mumbles.

He smiles, leans over to brace himself with a fist on the mattress, kiss her cheek. "Be right back. Don't move a muscle."

"Couldn't even if I tried," she admits, her half smile curving into his lips.

 **x**

They sit on the screened-in porch near the back door, twin rocking chairs with wide arm rests. Her ribs and sternum ache with the effort of muscles holding her upright, but she wouldn't miss the last of this day for the world.

Chaplin lies between them, tail thumping against the porch from time to time. Unleashed, but perhaps too lazy to make trouble, he lifts his head and nudges into her fingers draped over the side of the rocker, prompting her to scratch behind his ears.

"Want another?" Rick says, lifting his cup. Hot tea. Neither of them can have alcohol with her pain pills and his muscle relaxants. The tag of the tea bag flutters with his movement.

"Sure," she accepts, handing her mug over to him. He stands, and she's seen how good the walks have done him, the last few days' rambling through woods and across streams. They've avoided the beach, even though it's just across the highway, and they've stuck to each other, let Chaplin's nose lead them.

Rick carries their mugs back inside; she hears the murmur of voices, the clink of dishes, liquid being poured. Milk and honey and the sun is giving off those deep violet colors of late winter light.

Nearly March, or close enough. Spring is so close she can feel it. She inhales and it's still the crisp scent of cold and bare branches, but just below that are the icy rivulets from further north, the melting of mountain snow, the streams filling, winter's hold over the world beginning to relent.

Chaplin lifts his head, her first indication of Castle's return, and then she hears him too, glances over to see him coming carefully through the screen door and onto the porch. The space heaters keep it toasty, but she likes the faint chill even if her shoulder and ribs will hate her later, remind her in the small hours of the morning, waking her with pain.

He lowers her mug to the wide, flat arm of the chair and she wraps her fingers around it, smiling. "Thank you."

"My pleasure." He drops into his chair beside her, his movement not entirely graceful, but definitely far more casual than hers could be, than his has been these last few months. Whether that's the effect of muscle relaxants or simply a mark of how far he's come, she doesn't know. She's just glad to see it.

"You've been sleeping well," she says, studying him as he settles into the chair. He leans over the side and rubs Chaplin behind the ears, lightly knocking his knuckles into the dog's muzzle. She smiles. "You seem better."

"I think I am," he admits.

"You took off the sling."

"I probably shouldn't have done that," he admits, his eyes connecting with hers for a moment. "I'll wear it tomorrow, and the next day on the drive home."

She smiles back, lighter somehow for that. Maybe because it means he wants her to drive, maybe because he's not being reckless with his newfound strength. "It's been good here, these last few days."

"Mm, it has." He sips his tea and she's reminded of her own, curls her fingers around the mug.

She's using her weak side to lift it to her lips, focusing to keep the tremble out of her arm. Not wanting to slosh. It's difficult. After being outside all day today, she's tired and uncoordinated. She knows she's stubborn, but it's what got her through it last time.

"We can take all night, Kate."

She glances up, sees the kindness in his eyes. The patience. She lets herself give up the task, presses the hot mug against her chest instead. The heat bleeds through her sweater and down into her bones, melting across an old scar and finally easing the new ones.

They have time. The sun is disappearing, the violet streaking to blue at the edges of the world. They have time, even if darkness falls and the cold hunkers down, even if the porch lights go off and Chaplin falls asleep.

She knows Castle is here. She didn't have that last time.

 **x**

He wipes the towel down his face, looks at himself in the mirror. The scars criss-cross his chest, lines from various surgeries, the fat pucker of a gunshot wound. It's been ten months since they were shot in their own home, and he's surprised that he hasn't thought about it all day.

Not for a second.

His shoulder has ached in the cold, and she joked about not being able to bend over and tie her shoes (which of course he immediately dropped down and tied for her), but those moments never brought it up for him. Stiffness in his body, working around injury, watching Kate to be sure she could handle Chaplin on his leash - those things have become so integral to daily life that the horror has somehow subsided.

He tosses the towel over the rack and finds his pajama pants on the little table where Kate left them. He dresses slowly, giving himself time to absorb that strange truth, and he probes the wound with his thumb.

It hurts, it aches, but it's a scar. It's _not_ a wound.

He shrugs his shoulders out from under the thought and turns for the bedroom, hitting the light switch. When he enters, Kate is sitting in the middle of the bed, her wet hair in a rope down her back, staining the t-shirt she had to borrow from him (one of his surf shop shirts from a trip to Cabo; she looks young, tired).

"You up for it?" she says. The laptop is over her thighs.

Rick rubs his hand down his chest, realizes he's rubbing the scars and makes himself stop. "Up for what?" The fire was lit for them sometime earlier this evening, maybe when they were walking Chaplin, and it throws cheerful sounds through the room.

She pats the mattress but it signals Chaplin, who rises from the floor by her side and leaps onto the bed, licking her neck, her chin.

They both laugh, Castle reaching for the dog, scooping him up. "Sorry, Charlie," he grins, Kate rolling her eyes at his new favorite joke. "They said no dogs on the bed. They're letting you stay special, so be good." He lowers Chaplin to the floor and the dog's nails scrabble on the wood floors before he darts away, making a tight circle around the bed.

"No, Chaplin," Kate says softly. Castle stands up and sees the dog's muzzle on top of the bed covers, sniffing and probing the quilt for space. She reaches across Castle's empty side and lightly thumps Chaplin's nose. "Down, you big baby."

Castle crawls into bed over Kate's legs, catching the laptop to keep it from slipping. He reclaims his spot before Chaplin can jump up again. "What'd you have in mind tonight?"

She immediately settles in against him, opening the laptop. Het wet hair against his bare skin makes him shiver.

She gives him one of those enigmatic looks, something like amusement in the set to her lips. "I was thinking... Netflix and chill."

He chuckles, opens his arm for her to squirm a little closer. "Do you even know what that means?"

"I _do_ ," she insists, and even while she manipulates the track pad to open a browser window, she's tweaking the skin at his hip. "It's literally what the cool kids are calling it these days."

He laughs a little harder, but he's definitely interested. They haven't had sex in weeks; it's difficult to be in the mood when the day is comprised of pain management, excruciating physical therapy, PTSD, stomach-heaving flashbacks, and plain old exhaustion.

He's not sure he's in the mood right now, but if she is, he'll get there. He'll _make_ himself get there.

"What are we watching?" he murmurs, leaning back against the piles of pillows on the bed. She comes with him, her fingers on the keyboard for the search box to call up Netflix. "Not horror."

She glances at him. "Not horror," she agrees. "No murder mysteries."

"No. And a big fat no to the whole Jane Austen BBC stuff."

She wrinkles her nose, but she's still fit against him, her long lines to his, her cheek on his good shoulder. He pets down her wet hair from his chin and lightly kisses her forehead.

"How about a comedy?" she says finally. "A tv show. We can binge watch episodes until we're..."

"Feeling it?" he chuckles.

She digs her chin into his pec and he grunts, twitching as she strikes a nerve. He can feel her smiling though, her lips at his bare skin, and he lets her have the reins, picking whatever show she likes.

" _Bob's Burgers_?" he murmurs, seeing selections scroll by. "Hm, _Archer -_ no, sorry that's another cartoon. We could do one of those Netflix comedies, the new ones-?"

"Hush," she says softly. "Not any of those. Something old. A little nostalgia."

And then she settles on _How I Met Your Mother_. Season one, from the very beginning.

"You watched this, right?" She draws her hand away from the computer, settles her touch just below his scar. Her fingers soothe.

"Yeah, when it was on. I like it a lot." His throat closes up. He's not sure why he's feeling emotional now, why almost a decade's worth of one television show makes him think about his own life, and the events it marked, and what he's lost and gained since then.

It's not like the show gave him this. But he could say its themes contributed to his restless spirit, which killed off Derrick Storm and earned his publisher's ire, which pushed him back into the whirlwind of parties, women, and desperation.

And then Kate Beckett.

"You're not laughing," she whispers, scratching her fingers against his sternum.

He catches her hand, brings her knuckles to his lips for a kiss. "My fault. The _and chill_ part has me distracted."

She smiles - he can feel it curving against his skin. He sinks his fingers into her wet hair and digs into the muscles at her neck. She eases, letting it go, and he does too.

He lets it go.

 **x**

After, she lies on her back in bed, breathing a little fast still, his head on her hip where it doesn't hurt at all. His feet hang off the bed, and it's a little comical, but he reaches back and wriggles his fingers for her hand.

She gives it, their fingers lacing immediately, his elbow propped up on the bed and her arm extending a little farther than is comfortable. But it's nice. Nice to be heart-beating-fast, blood-rushing blissed, sweat-and-sex damp, content. "Where'd the laptop go?"

He chuckles. "It's on the floor. It's fine."

She tips her smile to the ceiling, sweat cooling. They barely got through one episode. More like old times.

"Should shower," he says, gravel in his throat. She loves exhausted-Castle, the tenor of his voice filled with love and roughness. What'd he do to her if either of them had the energy.

"Forget showering," she sighs, squeezing his fingers. "Last night here." Her lips are tingling, and she touches them, feels the places where she rubbed against his five o'clock shadow. Raw. "Get under the covers with me instead."

"Mm. Soon as I can move."

She grins under her fingers, manages to make herself sit forward. His head shifts on her hip and she cups the side of his face to keep him there. He raises his eyebrows, her breasts in his face.

"I like this view," he murmurs.

"Move your ass, I'm getting cold."

He groans, but he does as she commands, leaning to one side and then crawling under the covers with her. On their left sides of course, but Castle forgets and drapes himself over her back, like he used to, arm around her and pressing between her breasts.

She expects it to hurt. But it doesn't.

She's tired, she's exhausted really, she's even aching in places foreign and domestic, but his body covering hers doesn't even cause a twinge. She aches. But she doesn't hurt.

His lips settle at her neck, a drifting mumble. "Night, Kate."

She smiles, happy to leave it there, perfect as it is. Maybe she wakes in the night in pain, maybe he does to nightmares, but this is exactly right. This is almost the way it was.

"Love you," she whispers, getting only his hum of agreement in return.

 **x**


	10. Render

**The Great Story**

* * *

 _Bury me to seed me: bloom me  
In loam me: grind me to meal me  
Knead me to rise: raise me to your mouth_

 _Rive me to river me:  
End me to unmend me:  
Rend me to render me:_

 _-Philip Metres, 'Prayer'_

* * *

 **X. Render**

 **x**

When Jim calls, Castle shifts on the couch and puts his finger in the book to mark his place. He studies her, watches the secret smile on her face as she greets her father, the way her head turns into the back of the couch.

After the initial small talk, in which Kate reassures Jim that they had an easy drive last weekend, and no she doesn't feel that bad, and yes she's relaxing on the couch, the conversation must turn serious. The crease in Kate's forehead, the press of her lips together, the way she avoids making eye contact with him, they all mean her father has some kind of news.

She murmurs into the phone, closing her eyes as if to concentrate.

It makes him burn with curiosity. He leans forward, forgetting his book entirely, but she pushes a foot into his thigh, shakes her head.

Castle makes himself scarce.

He knows she doesn't like dividing her attention, that she really hates it when he tries to have a conversation with whomever is on the phone, talking while she's talking. He touches her shoulder in passing and heads for the sunroom instead, figuring it's easier for him to stand up and move than it is her.

He reclines on the chaise and opens his book once more, ruminating on her father's call and what it might be about. Probably family news - Jim Beckett can be something of a gossip in that quiet, reserved way of his. He'll call to pass along information, as if, with Johanna gone, it's become his job to be that link between Kate and her mother's family.

Amusing, at least. She'll have a good story, and she'll be willing to share since he left her alone.

Bored? Yeah, he is, a little bit.

Castle rubs his thumb against the deckle edge of the book's pages, the feathery sensation against his skin. He fancies that the sun is warmer than it has been this week, March bringing so much rain and grey skies that the least hint of light makes the day seem abundant with spring.

"Rick?"

He leans forward, searching for her. "In here."

She appears down the long hallway and heads toward him, a wriggle of her fingers in appreciation. He leans back and waits on her arrival, and when she finally comes through the wide doorway, she lays her hand on the top of his head.

"Hey," she says, almost distractedly. Scratches his scalp.

Rick tilts his head back and glances up at her. She's staring out through the greenhouse windows, the golden light of sunset on her face.

"Kate?"

"Mm, my dad called."

"I figured as much."

She rouses, smiling down at him before she sits on the arm of the chaise. Her arm comes around his neck, her fingers making slow strokes at his shoulder, almost leaning into him. "Sofia took a job in Baltimore," she says, still staring out the window. "My cousin? She was leasing the apartment from me."

"She was - oh, yes. Sofia. Your Aunt Theresa's daughter, the so-called black sheep. Good for her; she needs to get out of her family's range-"

Kate tweaks his ear, laughing. "She does, you're right. This will be good for her."

It dawns on him suddenly, what it means. "Your old place. When is she moving?"

Kate nods slowly, her eyes coming back to meet his. "In two weeks. Actually, they want her in Baltimore by Monday, but she couldn't arrange the moving company until the weekend after."

"You're saying that in two weeks your apartment will be empty."

"Aunt Theresa made Dad call me and beg for Sofia to be let out of her lease, but it's not like we had anything on paper. She paid me, and the rent came out of my account automatically, so-"

"Whoa. Hey," he says, sitting up straighter. " _All_ of your medical bills are coming out of your account. And you'll be paying rent now on top of that? Without paid leave? Kate-"

She presses her lips together, raises both eyebrows as if to say _what can you do?_

He leans in. "This is the ideal time to set up joint checking. Come on, Beckett. You can't-"

"Sure," she says, waving him off. "That's fine; it's a good time for it, since I don't have anything but disability coming in. I'll need it."

He nods, surprised that went down so smoothly, but it reminds him of his original point. "And the apartment." He slides his arm around her waist, tracing circles on her hip in the same way she's been on his shoulder. "It's empty. You want?"

"I do," she says, letting out a breath with a little laugh. "I was afraid you wouldn't."

"I think it's time," he says, tugging on her hip. "Sit with me. Talk to me. What are you thinking?"

She lets him slide her off the arm of the chair and right beside him, their hips squeezed together. She squirms to sit forward, glancing back at him. "I want - I don't know. More than this. Vacation has been great, but maybe this is our opportunity to step out."

"You ready to go back to the city? Back to the job?"

Kate gives him a long look. "Are you?"

"I'm not sure I'll go back to the PI gig," he admits.

"What about - with me?" she says softly. "At the Twelfth."

"You're the captain," he answers. "We already went through that. You'll have bureaucracy to deal with."

"Doesn't mean you can't consult on the interesting cases, show up with my coffee." She gives him a smile that looks _shy_ and he can't fathom it.

"Of course I'll show up for the interesting ones. Even though you'll be trying to kick me out-"

"No." She rounds her shoulders forward, curling in. "And I'm sure Espo and Ryan would love to have you."

He shakes his head. The idea of riding out with her detectives, but not her, doesn't hold much appeal. "I might not quite be there yet." He likes that she's talking about captaincy as if it's matter of fact that's where she'll be. "Office, though? That sounds right up my alley."

"Are you really offering to help me do _paperwork_?"

He laughs. "I guess I am."

She bites her bottom lip, smiles so widely that it pulls out of her teeth. "I guess we have an apartment."

 **x**

He has the nightmare. Wakes sweating and sick.

He has to leave the bed and rush through the dark rooms until he turn on the light in the kitchen and stare at the harsh lines of counter and bar and fridge until they make sense again. Until they're not the loft. Not the loft. The Hamptons.

Soon her apartment. But not the loft.

He breathes, feels his chest and lungs tightening, but he can still breathe. He's breathing.

It's just a nightmare. The lights are on, bright, and it should be fine.

But he keeps seeing her collapse, slow-motion, the horrendous awful collapse. Crawling, eyes dark and dizzy on his. The slick slide of her fingers in his, their blood, hanging onto her for life itself.

He won't be going back to sleep tonight.

 **x**

Kate traces her fingers over the image on the screen, over and over, trying to make and unmake the lines that mean nothing and everything all at once. She doesn't know what she's seeing, but she knows what it means.

"Ms. Beckett?"

She presses her fingers to her lips, tamping down a smile. This smile is for no one else. "I need to call my husband. Can I - will you wait for him? So he can come on back."

The woman hesitates, a frown creasing her forehead if not her mouth. "I don't..."

"He dropped me off," she explains, scrambling for her phone, leaning as far out as she can to snag it from the chair. "He's just down the street." She has the phone, is already calling him, not sure she can breathe. "At the bookstore. He'll-" At his voice she straightens up, her eyes cutting to the monitor. "Rick."

"You done already? I thought it would take ages-"

"No, babe, not done at all," she says, her voice fluttering so that she sounds strange even to her own ears.

"What's wrong?" he asks immediately. "Hey, Kate, I'm just at the bookstore, I can be there in five-"

"I'm going to make them wait for you," she says quickly, touching the screen. "Because you have months yet. Months, Rick, but I want you here for every second."

"Are you - is it a panic attack?" he says in a low voice. She can hear him leave the book shop, the little bell over the door. "Is it a panic-"

"It may have started there," she grins. "But let's call it love instead."

"I don't understand. I'm almost there, but I don't know what you mean."

She lifts her chin to the woman. "Will you have him come back here? I want him to see this too."

The ultrasound technician gives a sour twist of her lips, but she presses the call button in the room. "Fine. I'll have the nurse get him."

From the phone, she can hear Castle hustling. Asking her to speak up, to talk to him. "I'm here," she says quickly. "We're here. And now you need to be here."

 **x**

Rick Castle holds the ultrasound photo. His hand is trembling.

He has a picture of their baby in his hand. He has a picture of their _baby_ in his hand.

"You were right," she says, nudging into him. "Put it up there, Rick."

He presses his free hand to the refrigerator, the cool surface grounding him. "I don't want to," he finds himself saying, the words unsticking from his throat. He turns to her, disbelief in every streak of light that hits his retinas. They're going to have a baby. "I don't want it to be _here_. It's - we're supposed to be home."

Her face falls.

"No, wait," he says, catching her wrist before she can turn away from him, shield herself. "Wait. I mean - I want to take this baby _home_."

"I don't know what that means." She touches his chest with a light hand, as if placating. "What does home even mean? I thought you said it was the two of us."

"I'm not saying it's not. But." He feels the sonogram in his fingers. "But don't you want to be home for this?"

Her shoulders relax; she steps into him. Presses her cheek to his. "Yes. Take us home, Rick."

He draws his arms around her, everything precious in the circle of his meager arms, both of them still a little broken, a little weak. They're going to have to house this baby, this family, with or without everything perfect.

But at least they can do it at home.

"A baby," he breathes. "From _when?_ The bed and breakfast?"

She laughs, leaning hard into him. "No, seven weeks, Rick. That was-"

"Seven? No, but that was-"

"Yeah," she grins.

At least she's grinning. He feels bewildered. Really? The one time, the one time and it was so damn pathetic.

She pats his cheek, softly rubs her lips against his. "Panic attack sex, for the win. You were right. Really did help."

 **x**


End file.
